Mad Maxxing: The Road Warrior Legacy

George and Ryan are joined by Cobra Malibu, Montgomery Carlo, and Detective Wolfman for a high octane discussion of Mad Max! Few film franchises have captured the essence of societal collapse and human resilience quite like Mad Max. In this deep-dive conversation, we explore how George Miller transformed a modest Australian revenge thriller into one of cinema's most influential and enduring post-apocalyptic visions.

Our panel of film enthusiasts traces the remarkable evolution of the Mad Max universe—from the relatively grounded first film showing a world teetering on the edge of chaos, to the fully-realized wasteland of The Road Warrior that would define the series' iconic aesthetic. We unpack how Miller, a former emergency room doctor, brought a uniquely visceral quality to his action sequences while simultaneously exploring profound themes of resource scarcity, civilization's fragility, and humanity's cyclical struggles.

The conversation reveals fascinating insights about Miller's recurring visual motifs, his approach to character development, and how each film responds to different cultural moments despite maintaining core thematic elements. We examine Mel Gibson's evolution throughout the original trilogy, the divisive reception of Beyond Thunderdome, and how Fury Road and Furiosa both honor and expand upon the established mythology.

What emerges is a deeper appreciation for Miller's remarkable visual storytelling prowess and his ability to reinvent the franchise with each installment while maintaining its essential DNA. As we navigate our own uncertain times of climate anxiety and societal tension, the Mad Max series offers not just spectacular entertainment, but a compelling lens through which to examine our relationship with resources, power, and what remains of humanity when systems collapse.

Join us for this fascinating- and fun! exploration of a franchise that began with stuntmen paid in beer and grew into one of cinema's most distinctive and influential sagas.

Transcript

Mad Max Introduction and Guest Welcomes

Speaker 1 0:10

uh, this is our first stream with guests talking about mad max. Today. We have, of course, ryan sinicrisis and then our guest montgomery carlo. We have cobra, malibu unlimitedlimited and the esteemable Detective Wolfman.

Speaker 2 0:25

Yo, okay, I appreciate it.

Speaker 1 0:28

Yeah, great, I appreciate you guys coming on. The reason I wanted to talk about the original Mad Max trilogy is because, by and large, I had not seen it. I saw Road Warrior many, many years ago and it didn't leave a huge impression on me. But the Furiosa movie came out and I don't know how many of you guys have seen it. I'm sure we'll get to it, but I thought it was really good and maybe you want to go back and watch the. Yeah, Is that right.

Speaker 3 0:53

Yes, very much.

Speaker 1 0:54

Yeah, it's terrific Detective, did you see it?

Speaker 4 0:57

I did see it. I thought it was pretty good. I'm kind of giving myself some leeway, in my opinion though, because I had a lousy theater experience and so I'm giving I'm giving the movie some grace so that I don't taint it with that I saw it in imax twice, which is the way to go.

Speaker 1 1:17

Like I almost feel like my local theater is downgrading the regular movie experience so that you'd pay extra for the Dolby digital or the IMAX is like. I went and saw another movie and I saw fall guy in regular and I was like God, I just I can tell it's like I'm listening to this through a tin can or something. It was really unfortunate and shitty. But, ryan, you got something. You're smiling over there.

Speaker 3 1:39

No, when you talk about the audio experience in the theater experience in the theater.

Speaker 1 1:45

You sound like another of your favorite youtubers. I know, I know I do. I sound like our friend. Do you guys ever follow damn fool idealistic Crusader?

Speaker 5 1:51

no not enough. This is a guy.

Speaker 1 1:53

You should follow him on Twitter and you should follow him on YouTube. He's uh, he's like the most like he's got. He's got an incredible amount of information and knowledge and opinions on like home video experiences and like this wealth of he hates everything and it's like really entertaining and interesting and I'm trying to get him on the show.

Speaker 3 2:12

Cause the guy knows he can never.

Speaker 1 2:13

Oh, that's not true.

Speaker 2 2:16

I guess I, I guess I am already following George.

Speaker 1 2:21

I am obsessed with him. I think, like I'm trying to figure out his game, like I don't get it, cause he'll be like you know, I would go see Phantom Menace re-release. But I know that the audio track they're using is not the superior one and the best is the laser disc from Japan in 2000. Right, and I'm like how can you even know that? How would you not know?

Speaker 3 2:41

about the Japanese audio laser disc track track for Phantom Menace. I listen to that one all the time.

Speaker 2 2:46

I actually like guys like that, because I kind of just use them as, oh okay, I can just get an understanding of what is the best way to watch something or what is. I kind of just pick up whatever they're and I don't have to be as disappointed and annoying about everything as they are, you know, and I don't have to be as disappointed and, like you know, annoying about every everything as they are. They can just be that person who I can just oh OK.

Speaker 3 3:12

But the problem is he doesn't actually explain why it's superior. It's just like it's very generalized, vague interpretation that you can't really follow. Why?

Speaker 1 3:24

OK, we're trying to get the guy on the show here, you know. But I know the thing is. I think he's got so much knowledge.

Speaker 3 3:30

Now we've flipped George and I, about defending and attacking here.

Speaker 1 3:34

I know, I know, because I want to have him on, because I have a lot of questions, and I'll be like dude, like he'll be like the end code on this Blu-ray is ass and and I'd be like, what is he? How do you what? You know? I'm like, what are you even talking about? Do you know what I mean? But, um, yeah, I guess we'll move on from there and, uh, let's go around the round table here and you guys can all introduce yourselves. Everything. Everybody, I think, knows me and ryan. But montgomery, you want to start kind of what your, what your game is online and then kind of your relationship to mad max hey everybody, um uh, monte carlo here.

Discussing the Original Mad Max (1979)

Speaker 5 4:03

Uh, I have a podcast that I have with uh big mac mccarthy called nice, uh, where uh it's actually a perfect venue to uh to bring that youtuber on uh to finally figure out what the fuck he likes yeah, yeah about something that you like for an hour. But um, yeah, it's. Uh, I've been watching movies forever. Uh, I mad max was. The first one I saw was thunderdome, which we're gonna have plenty to talk about there, but um, I've just mad max has always been just like the definition of cool.

Speaker 5 4:33

So, uh, I'm happy to be here totally cobra malibu, you want to go?

Speaker 2 4:38

yeah, hi, I'm cobra malibu unlimited. Uh, I'm a? Uh, a filmmaker and motion graphics designer from Minneapolis. So, yeah, I do a lot of work for the Kino Corner and, if you guys know Oliver Harper, I've done some work for him as well, oh yeah, have you really yeah yeah, did you work on some of his movies.

Speaker 2 5:04

No, I haven't worked on a movie I would like to in the future, but I've done a lot of stuff for his YouTube. So he has like an opening logo which is like the Canon Films logo. Yeah, I did it with his name, uh. And then another one I just did recently was the orion logo. Instead it says oliver harper, uh. So that's.

Speaker 1 5:35

I'm a big fan, yeah uh and uh, yeah.

Speaker 2 5:38

So, um, yeah, that's kind of what I do, and uh go ahead.

Speaker 1 5:45

Sorry, go ahead. I was just gonna say uh my experience with mad max.

Speaker 2 5:50

Um, I think I'm trying to remember which mad max movie I saw the first. I think it might have been uh, the uh or thunder uh, beyond thunderdome uh, because I growing up I had to like all these vhs tapes that were taped off of TV that my dad's friend gave us. He just gave us like this giant thing, uh and uh, um and uh, but I remember that was one of the movies on there, and then I think I saw Mad Max and then I saw uh.

Speaker 1 6:21

The Road.

Speaker 2 6:21

Warrior, um, but uh, but yeah, I I think I think many years later after that. But the one thing is, I right, I guess I won't get into it too much, but uh, but definitely like uh, uh, or seeing the uh, um, or seeing a, a thunderdome first kind of made me like not as, not as interested in her or not, as I kind of had one idea of like, oh, this this is like more for kids, isn't it? This series is more for kids. And then seeing like Mad Max and seeing the road warriors, like kind of gives you a different idea of the whole series I think we're gonna have a big disagreement on that one.

Speaker 1 7:09

But uh, thank you, cobra, I appreciate it. Oliver harper is, uh, is great. I've modeled my channel after him to a certain extent. And montgomery your, your podcast nice, by the way is really funny and awesome and your frank sinatra episode you did was like terrific. That was so cool, thank you. Thank you, yeah, it's a great podcast. Um, detective, what? What's going on, brother?

Speaker 4 7:28

yo, uh, I'm detective wolfman. Uh, I host a rock and roll radio show on soundcloud called on the beat with detective wolfman, and I've also got a podcast on spotify called bloody pulp. It's a show about all things Pulp fiction Everything from hard-boiled crime fiction to drive-in monster flicks, and occasionally I write fiction and post it online Apocalypse Confidential Man's World you can find my work there. And then, in terms of Mad Max, the first Mad Max movie I saw all the way through was the Road Warrior. I think I'd seen the Thunderdome scene, like the fight scene, on tv at some point, and then me and my buddy jeremy in the fourth grade, we went to rent a mad max movie.

Speaker 4 8:12

They only had the road warrior. We rented it and we were obsessed with it for like that. My whole fourth grade year was my mad max year. And then, um, from then I saw beyond thunderdome and then I saw the original. That was the last one I saw of the trilogy.

Speaker 1 8:27

I think that's probably a lot of people's experience that they watch Mad Max. One last Brian. What do you think?

Speaker 3 8:33

Yeah, I was totally new to this series. Actually, I had kind of been avoiding it for most of my life. I never really expressed any interest in watching it, for whatever reason it passed by. You know, the original run was obviously before I was, before I was born, and then it came back into the you know pop culture with Mad Max Fury Road. I was in like graduate school at the time and I was just like, yeah, I have to limit what movies I need to see and which ones I don't, and no interest. And then when this one came out I don't know something about furiosa really looked intriguing and so I was like, well, if I'm gonna go see that one, then why not just watch everything else all at once? So within the last two weeks or so I watched, I bought the blue, uh, the 4k anthology and just watched one, two, three, four, five. There you go and went to the theater to see, uh, furiosa okay, terrific.

Speaker 1 9:23

Well, thanks again, guys for being on. This can be cool. Let's start off with Mad Max from 1979. It was a low budget Australian revenge picture that Ryan, as you told me has I mean you said that when you talked on the phone it has a lot in common with, like seventies revenge movies like walking tall or you know. There's a lot of examples.

Speaker 1 9:39

But I was really surprised at how much I enjoyed this movie. I thought it was going to be a step down from the other two because you know I watched it last and maybe more of a nascent effort and a little more low budget. But and obviously it's like sort of incongruous with the rest of the series because it's sort of not exactly the absolutely desolate, barren nuclear wasteland of the rest of the series. So I'm sure that gives people like they've you know rest of the series. So I'm sure that gives people like they you know they get freaked out about that, right. But um, I was really impressed with it and thought it was terrific. I like it more than road warrior and uh, but go ahead, I thought which order are we going in?

Speaker 1 10:14

just pop, just go. We're just going today um, I'll start or I can dictate, or I can't go ahead. What's that? Stop talking Go ahead. Yeah, that's right. Okay, next time I'll pick.

Speaker 3 10:26

Yeah, well, I'll just go. So I think it's definitely the rawest. I like to describe it or relate it as like the pilot for Mad Max, right, it's sort of what you think it is. But they had the general idea but they didn't actually fulfill everything that they probably wanted to do, and obviously a lot of that has to do with budgetary constraints and limitations on the filmmakers parts. I mean, george Miller had never made a film before this, he never made a feature film, he was a physician and this was his, his big debut, right. So it has the semblance of what you, what they put into it going forward, but they definitely amped it up like 10 times more when they got to part two. So you still feel like you're in some semblance of the real world here. I mean, the cars that people drive look mostly realistic. Uh, there's real buildings, there's, um, you know, electricity and plumbing which you don't even see in the later films.

Speaker 3 11:20

Um, and then, yeahwise, it's just a very, very simplistic revenge plot which takes a while to get to that angle. It kind of meanders around about these biker outlaws that are harassing and terrorizing the outback, and that's what we were describing. It kind of seems more like those biker 70s films or kind of like the Billy Jack films too to a certain extent. Or even then it kind of morphs into death wish by the end. But, um, it definitely feels the costumes have the edge of what we're heading towards. They're they're definitely all leather bound. Uh, there's a big emphasis on leather, but nothing like the total bdsm weird stuff that comes in part two and beyond. Uh, there's less, you know, emphasis on like fetishism in this movie. It's just, it's a much more normal movie.

Speaker 1 12:10

So yeah, I like it a lot I'm gonna pass that to monty. But you can see little nascent elements of things that like there's a girl on a chain, like you know there's even a guy when they're trying to steal from the tanker truck where they they have like a pole and they they sort of catapulted into it. Yeah, reminiscent of I was like this guy, george miller just has like seven things he wants to absolutely perfect and continually redoes them forever, like for 50, for 30 years.

Speaker 5 12:34

But go ahead and they hit every single time uh so mad max is.

Speaker 5 12:40

Uh yeah, mel gibson doesn't even really take the stage until halfway through the movie and like it I actually do think it is like pretty kinky one, because like they're the leather bound outfits and everything, but also every single like when Mel's wife is going to like they're there, they stop at the, the spare tire. They're getting that fixed and she goes off to get ice cream and he's trying to lick her ice cream. I thought that this was going to turn into Last House on the Left. I saw Beyond Thunderdome. That was the first time I saw it in middle school and so I wasn't ready for this to be like what's going to happen here, and also I didn't even know really that this was supposed to take place in the future. I just thought that's what Australia looks like, this movie my biggest takeaway was like Australians are evil.

Speaker 5 13:34

Yeah, I've never been there, if you think the. Earth is flat. It's not real.

Speaker 1 13:40

That's true. I've never been there, so what can I say? Let me ask you this question real quick is our police cars yellow in australia, or is this for the movie? Couldn't tell you okay, um, yeah, uh, cobra. What do you think, brother?

Speaker 2 13:56

oh uh. Well, it's kind of interesting. You guys were talking about like the sort of the dna of the series kind of is is all uh kind of there and uh and uh. One thing is I noticed I had some notes but I misplaced my note then.

Speaker 1 14:13

Um, that uh at the beginning here.

Speaker 2 14:18

Yeah, um, uh, at the beginning. Uh, you have. What is it? It's the. What is his name? The Knight.

Speaker 1 14:30

Knight Rider or whatever the Knight Rider.

Speaker 2 14:32

Yes, the Knight Rider he he has, or what, yeah, the big chase at the beginning, and but he's saying you see me, tokara, you see me, and it's it. It reminded me of like, oh, witness me, you know, yeah, and uh in, in, uh fury road. So I was like, you know, I, watching it, I was kind of realizing, I was like it's all there, it's all it's been there from the beginning. Um think that definitely, comparing this to another movie from 1974, stone is like a biker movie and it has Hugh Keyes Byrne in it also Australian.

Speaker 2 15:24

There's a lot of in it, also Australian. There's a lot of overlap between the movies. I mean not just the star, but also just having a biker gang, everything, and so kind of interesting to me of like because it is such an original movie. I remember seeing the the Cisco and Ebert review, um, they believe, or they thought it was like, or uh, uh, I think that. No, I I don't think they did one for the original, but I think they did for uh, the first one they did was for the uh road warrior, but they said like this is the most original movie you know, and that's what's so great about, I think, about mad max. Is that such an original idea? Yet it is steeped in like the western tradition. It's steeped in uh, I mean uh, like uh, death, uh, death wish, or yeah, walking tall. It's really steeped in that tradition. But it is its own thing. It it's really.

Speaker 1 16:24

It's cool. It's cool and I like the. I almost kind of like and prefer the. It's not the apocalypse, but everything's fucked and we can't get gas and it's kind of shitty to live here and the doctor's office looks like a dump and the police aren't really around. I mean, it seems sort of prescient, maybe to current.

Speaker 2 16:44

And one thing is that does and I'm sorry, wolfman, but it makes it not as pulp, it's not as, it's like oh, this could happen, oh, this could happen, like a breakdown in our world could happen, and then this would be the result of it, rather than it being like okay, everything's crazy and like you know.

Speaker 1 17:03

Yeah, rather than it being like okay, everything's crazy, and like you know, yeah, and actually I think it was George Mueller said in that interview with Andy Fair he did that the catalyst for this was the OPEC crisis. And he goes what if it was just a little bit worse? You know, detective, what do you think? Not pulp?

Speaker 4 17:18

I wouldn't say not pulp, I mean it's definitely less pulpy than its sequels, or at least at least pulpy than the road warrior.

Speaker 4 17:25

But I think I have a similar trajectory with a lot of people who got introduced to the series when they were kids, is when I was growing up and I was watching all of these. Uh, the first, mad Max, was my least favorite and I didn't even like it the first time I saw it, and now that I'm an adult, it's my, it's my favorite and it's not even close. Um, yeah, it's so cool and yeah it is. It is such a believable state of decline to where there's still basically an, an infrastructure that people can rely on, but it doesn't work near as well as things work now. Yeah, it's obvious that, like, cars are very important and when your car breaks down, if you need a part, there are no new parts coming in. So if you need a part, someone's going to have to find it off of another existing junked vehicle. Even the police department, which should have, you know, pretty decent resources, they're having to pull parts off of their broken down cars to fix their other cars.

Speaker 4 18:31

And, yes, some people are able yeah, they have electricity, they're obviously able to get food from somewhere and some people are still kind of living in denial and you can tell by their reactions to Toe Cutter's biker gang when they come into town.

Speaker 4 18:46

People kind of treat them at first like a novelty, until they start causing trouble and then everyone freaks out, more so than all the other movies, and I think because the villains are a little dialed down, the threat of them is so much more believable, and the way that they menace people and the way they menace max's wife, it's so uncomfortable because you can you can really put yourself in that situation of like oh no, these aren't like, these aren't like troglodytes, these aren't like these like superhuman, like nuclear mutated weirdos.

Speaker 4 19:22

These are just, it's just a group of bad men and there's more of them than there are of us and they want to hurt us and there's really nothing we can do about it. Um, and it's interesting about it being what makes it interesting as a revenge film is that it's a dual revenge film. The first half is toe cutter and the gang getting revenge against max for killing the knight rider, and then the third and the gang getting revenge against Max for killing the Knight Rider. And then the third act is Max getting revenge for them, killing the goose and his family.

Speaker 1 19:53

And the goose was cool. I liked it.

Speaker 4 19:55

Yeah, the goose was great. And like, yeah, it sucks when he buys it.

Speaker 1 20:01

Yeah, what a great sequence too. I mean I felt for him when they set him on fire in the truck. I was like damn, I mean, the movie's got a lot of grit. I thought the car chases, they were incredible, like the stunts. Remember the guy that he? He rides through all the bikes and the dude falls off the bike and then the tire of the other bike hits him in the head. I was like jesus christ, I'm like you know that guy earned his wage, right. But man, I mean, on that opening car chase, every time he does that great trick where the car is coming at you and then he cuts immediately as it passes and then, right, I'm like you could feel the speed. It was incredible. I thought, more than road warrior, where there's a lot of excessive use of let's speed up the camera to make this shit look a little faster. Right, I'm actually a road warrior detractor, but, um, I don't want to take away if anybody else has, uh, anything to say about mad max the original I got, I got, I got.

Speaker 4 20:48

One more thing to add and absolutely one, one thing that I think is such a great example and a great detail of showing the civil the civilizational decline. Uh, with the exception of max's child, there are no children, no one's having kids.

Speaker 4 21:09

Max is like the only person that's married and has a kid. I think the Goose and all the other cops. They spend all their free time working on their cars and going to bars and drinking and trying to score. All the townsfolk are just fucking off and fucking in their cars and in in that and even yeah, and even the, the biker guys like, yeah, there's definitely, there's implied, um, you know, bisexuality, for lack of a better word. These guys are all very close and when they attack that couple who are leaving that first town, when they come upon the guy, he's running off and all he has is his shirt. His pants and his underwear are missing and you can see that his ass is red.

Speaker 4 21:52

So they clearly didn't have any trouble sodomizing this guy while raping his girlfriend that was a detail I missed yeah thank you, so I brought you in but yeah, but well, you can always count on me to notice that kind of thing.

Speaker 1 22:06

Well, here's what I would say. I think George Miller has a lot of strengths. Sex is not one of them. He's not a director and I've not seen Lorenzo's Oil or anything. But every time there's any hint of sexuality it's like a very brutal extended rape scene from Road Warrior right or this kind of hippie free love sex which is like played all for comedy and not sexy at all. And like even his women characters I'm thinking like tina turner or furios, you know, there's like almost he maybe a little bit with the wives in fury road right where he kind of gets a little horny, but like otherwise they're putting pregnant.

Speaker 1 22:44

Yeah, yeah, they're all wearing white and they're all hot. You know what I mean. I always watch that with my wife and she's like why are they all hot? They're all models. That doesn't make any sense.

Speaker 4 22:52

Why would you put ugly women in a vault so?

Speaker 1 22:55

true, yeah, very true, I think.

Speaker 4 22:59

Rex's wife is a babe.

Speaker 1 23:02

Yeah, she's fine. Yeah, but they never. There's never any go ahead.

Speaker 4 23:07

No, there's never any hot fucking.

Speaker 1 23:09

No, no, it's all very chaste. A lot of sitting, yeah.

Speaker 5 23:13

It's, I guess in all of them, it's true, you know, after the bomb goes off. But it's what I really like about the, like Mad Max. The first one is that we, we are and like only really low budget can do this, uh, because everything's so intentional, but uh, rapture has happened and these are the people left. It's like all the good people are gone. Like it's kind of like children of men, where they find a fertile woman, like who has child and like that is what, like everything's about now and like preserving that. Uh, and there's, like you know, the, the, the Mongolians on motorcycles who are like like racing throughout the streets, just like hyenas that you have to contend with and like it's that that's what makes. When Max goes, he steals the, the, the black car from the police force, just like. Oh, now it's like like mask off, it's like the hat man time.

Speaker 1 24:07

Exactly.

Speaker 3 24:11

Ryan, you got any closing thoughts on Mad Max? Yeah, I like it, but I think it was outdone by the next movie which we'll get to.

Speaker 1 24:17

We got a great comment in the chat from Trembling Colors, who's a great reply guy. Is that the right phrase? That's sort of a derogatory phrase, isn't it reply guy?

Speaker 5 24:25

no, it's not. Um, there's no shame in reply guys. As a matter of fact, uh, long live the reply guys.

Speaker 1 24:30

I mean harry fleas perry abasi is like a reply guy, isn't he? And he's yeah, uh. Trembling colors says max's wife is hot, I agree. Curly haired, saxophone playing waifu, true, um, I want to ask you guys I'll open this up, though I think the mad max series is as much a great high concept ip or property as it is like a great uh concept, as it is a showcase for like the trajectory of mel gibson's career and his evolution as an actor. What did you guys think of mel gibson in this movie?

Speaker 1 25:03

oh uh, here I'm gonna I'm gonna crack my.

Speaker 2 25:06

I'm gonna crack my fosters um oh hell yeah, I gotta uh, there's a big foster sign in mad max uh, so uh, for uh, mel gibson. It's kind of interesting. Interesting because at the beginning, or at the beginning of the first movie there is the or that during the big chase, all the other cops, you know of course, are driven off the road. Everybody's wrecked, and you know. And they, they tell him like we're all snafu, you know here, and he's got it, he's got to be the one, you know, to stop it.

Speaker 2 25:45

And of course, he, you know uh, in the great eye-popping crash uh scene there uh an explosion um, he does and uh, but that really uh, just makes you think about uh, or uh, or makes me think about a uh, a lethal weapon and how.

Speaker 2 26:04

That's sort of how uh uh his character and that that is is is sort of the guy who's got to come in and, like you know, he's the you know, uh, just like dirty harry, it's like every dirty job that one comes along.

Speaker 2 26:18

So, like, max is sort of the fixer, you know, like absolutely, and uh, uh, and so sorry, oh, go ahead, yeah, go ahead, but uh, but yeah, that's basically kind of how I see it's like, kind of it works into, uh, you know, mel gibson, uh, like, or I'm thinking something of like um, uh, uh, to kill the sunrise, you know, or something like that, where he just he always plays like sort of like an off kilter kind of character who's like on the edge of society, and so that this kind of set it off of like really, you know, allowing him to, you know, uh, no, you're right, it's very like congress with, like his sort of political personality and like, yeah, yeah, every character he plays, shane black does a great rant where he talks about the character he plays in lethal weapon, about how he is the kind of character that everybody in society says we hate.

Speaker 1 27:14

You go away. You make us think about bad things. We're going to put you in a cage. We don't want to think about you in peacetime and when we need you. Okay, we're going to open up and let the monster go.

Speaker 2 27:22

He calls it. Yeah, he calls him. He's like the Frankenstein gunslinger. So he's the Frankenstein. Yeah, it has to pull out his gun.

Speaker 2 27:31

You know that, yeah, when, when time gets tough or times get tough in a yeah, and so that's what I was thinking about when I was watching it this time, because in the past I mean, I've just watched bad backs for just for fun, like it's just a fun movie, so I haven't really thought of it in any sort of critical uh sense at all, uh, uh watching. But this time I was kind of like picking up on things. There was one thing I picked up on that actually before you, we uh jump off this one. Uh, the um, oh.

Speaker 2 28:00

At the beginning the son is, uh, he's like straight up like playing with a gun.

Speaker 2 28:07

Yeah, he's like that, that's like one of his toys.

Speaker 2 28:09

And I was like looking, I was like that is not like, it's not look like a typical, like bb gun or any any uh toy for a child and uh, it's really not like touched upon or something.

The Road Warrior: Defining the Franchise

Speaker 2 28:19

Because I thought, uh, uh, okay, this time I was like, oh, it is does like a wife grab it away from, because it just looks like a real gun, but it's kind of playing into this thing of like uh, uh, basically like uh and the, the film's themes kind of go into this of uh, sort of this uh, loss of innocence, and then like a sort of a uh, uh, and as the film history goes uh or uh, the the uh film series goes forward, it's uh, it's sort of like uh, um, this history of violence, this like uh, uh, and there's like legacies of of uh of people going on into like the next movie with uh lord humongous and stuff like that well, miller actually said something great about that in the uh in his interview, where he goes um, this is the story of mankind forever is we have resources, we want to protect them.

Speaker 1 29:13

You don't have them, you're trying to take them, we will protect them, right? I mean, that was like kind of he's like it's a cyclical story, it'll never end. Uh, detective wolfman, let's move on to road warrior. I'm going to open it up to you to tell everybody why it's awesome, and then everyone else can repeat why it's awesome, and then I'll say why I don't like it.

Speaker 4 29:27

Go ahead, you know uh, well, yeah, when I first saw road warrior me and my buddy we just became obsessed with it, just because it was unlike anything we'd ever seen. Um, and you know now in retrospect, road warrior is when people think of mad max, like the images and the concepts they're thinking of. Road Warrior, that that look, that post-apocalypse, all the old beat up like malformed hodgepodge vehicles yeah, the weird leather, the mohawks, the chains, that's all Road Warrior. Weird leather, the mohawks, the chains uh, that's all road warrior. And, like you, really can't overstate how influential road warrior was in terms of inspiring other ip. The twisted metal video game series wouldn't exist.

Speaker 4 30:17

Road warrior, uh, the fist of the north star popular anime, the main guy, like he, he's literally wearing mad max's cop uniform. I don't know how they got away with that, um, uh, but it's so. It's one of those things where it's taking, it has even more of a threadbare structure than the first film does. So where normally sequels get more complicated and they get bigger, road Warrior the scale gets bigger but the story itself gets smaller and simpler and even less complicated. The story is just survive.

Speaker 4 31:00

It's Mad Max, he's going around. You get the sense that probably 15 years or so have gone by because they've grayed his hair. He's got gray in his stubble, so he looks older. Um, and like things have gone, gotten even way worse than they are in the original. Um, now you can, and so I re-watched the whole series last week because I wanted to see Furiosa, and one kind of plot development that you could kind of put together is that, if you want to, if you want to assign any continuity to the series, cause you could say part of its strength is that there really isn't a continuity.

Speaker 4 31:37

Um but the first Mad Max takes place by the coast. So you could infer that even during the events of the first Mad Max, things were much worse. The farther inland you went, and so the series goes inland, the farther it goes, because you leave the beach, you leave the green and you get into deeper, higher desert to where, by the time you get to Fury Road, there's just sand and plateaus. That's it. Like that's all that you can see for miles. So they're literally in the heart of the island. But yeah, road Warrior, it's just cool, it's high concept, it's weird. They do my favorite thing to where, like, they have their kind of opening intro where the narrator kind of sets up the world but after that they explain nothing, it's all. It's all just visual, a little bit of dialogue, the action drives the movie, um, and yeah, it's just fucking cool uh ryan yeah, this is my favorite one.

Speaker 3 32:47

Uh, I like it a lot. I agree with a lot of the comments that were just said. I I want to. The continuity issue is a is a really intriguing, intriguing aspect to it that, um, they basically ignore. They ignore the movie, but they also recap it in the first like few minutes of the film, and that's mainly because I think most people in america at that time when the film was released, had not seen or even heard of mad max. It was bought by american distribution, had a limited run, but it was not very big. It was big in australia, but it was not big here, and so they even retitled the movie just to the road warrior. It was not mad max 2 or med max the road warriors, just the road warrior. Um, so that's just like a really interesting thing that they decided to even go with that at that point to distribute it.

Speaker 3 33:35

Um, but anyway, the pacing is a huge part of why this movie is just so just enthralling and exciting. I mean, the first movie has a has a somewhat leisurely pace to it. It it takes a while to get going, which is fine, there's nothing wrong with that, and it works, but this movie is just like zero to 60 immediately, and then we're off for the entire movie like dial, everything up past 11. So nonstop action, culminating in the climax of the film, which is this insane oil tanker chase which goes on for about 13 minutes with all manner of vehicles. And now we have kind of weird off-terrain, like futuristic retrofitted vehicles, dune buggies, gyrocopters, all these things that you would not expect are just like flying in at every angle, attacking this oil tanker which then derails off the side of the road. Okay, so you have that, which is fantastic, and that is the model, I think, for more so what we're seeing in the modern Mad Max movies Fury Road and Furiosa. I mean we're definitely hearkening back to this movie, more so than anything in number one or number three.

Speaker 3 34:43

So also Mel Gibson has much more of a presence in this movie. In my opinion he's he has like. The only two moments that stand out for me in the first movie are like when he's introduced. We see the back of his head in the first movie and he's like talking on the radio and a deep, gravelly voice and like, ok, this is really cool.

Speaker 3 34:59

And when he steps into the frame for the first time, takes off the sunglasses and looks at the crash, but like after that, like he frame for like the first time, takes off the sunglasses and looks up the crash, but like after that, like he's okay in the first one, in this one he's like just totally a cool dude, cool hero loner doesn't want to be involved but ends up involved in all these situations because of necessity. He sort of has that heart of gold thing at the end that you sort of see, but not really, and just the emphasis on oil as a essential good that is driving this entire world. This is the currency of the world. At this point it just drives home the point that was introduced in the first film and I think it makes it much more impactful. But I'd love to know what happened between the first two, this movie and the previous movie, how the world got so bad so fast. That's, that's probably the only thing that I would like to see turn on cnn.

Speaker 1 35:51

But uh, I like, in my opinion, I think, mel gibson, like you're so right, every time they cut to him, you're just like yes, cool, yeah, oh, we're going back to bad max. Oh, he's sitting there, oh, he's looking, you know, yes, he looks awesome.

Speaker 5 36:05

Uh, monty thoughts um, so, uh, I kind of like uh the the continuity like errors here.

Speaker 5 36:13

Uh, I think that it is uh like, kind of like, um I forget who said that earlier but uh, the how, like the first mad max, like the pilot, and now this is like the full concept, even down to like the swingy bars, uh, where all of the uh the like the the gas train I guess you'd call it uh, they're driving but uh, in like later movies. But, um, this is probably one of the most ambitious like sequels, that like of any franchise really, uh, the willingness to completely like flip the script, to reinvent the entire story, and it's um, I, I just think that it's uh, I kind of like the high plains drifter of it all, where, like he's the only one who can like teach these people to like have some backbone. Um, I, it's my favorite of of the trilogy. Uh, I just think it's like kind of what ryan was saying earlier, just kind of like the like the action per minute going on here. The one of my favorite scenes was the shotgun shell and how he was threatening the gyrocopter guy and the entire time, just to find out that he didn't actually have a shell. It goes from like like the walking dead is probably one of the best examples I can really have here, where it's like all right, well, it kind of just started in the first one, but now it's like full-fledged and like you have to have survived, like you have to have seen some horrible shit, you had to have gotten through it.

Speaker 5 37:37

And max really has like this, like, uh, he's not even that much of a father figure to uh, the little, uh boomerang boy. He just kind of like he tosses in the little thing just because, like what am I gonna do? Throw it away and, um, like very reluctantly goes into all this kind of like cracking open his little heart a little bit. But I again, we're gonna have a lot to say about uh, beyond thunderdome. But um, I, yeah, I just think that this is like like this is it? This is what miller wanted to make, and I think it's it really just like sticks the landing and he's really been remaking it like ever since kind of.

Speaker 4 38:15

Yeah, well, and one thing kind of add to what uh, monty was just saying like the, the road warrior is a perfect example of how if you, just if you make your hero look cool enough, if you, if you give them the right look, they really don't have to do a lot all the time. Like not to say that mad max is not a man of action, because he is, but when he's not behind the wheel of the car like he's not. He's not like fidd is, but when he's not behind the wheel of the car like he's not. He's not like fiddling with things, he's not quipping. He's not tony stark. You know he barely talks, but he just looks so fucking cool that you can't take your eyes off him. You know all the, all the good guys are in white. He's an all black. He's got his cool like biker leather cop outfit with a weird shoulder pad. His hair looks wild. He just looks completely unique and, yeah, you can't take your eyes off of him.

Speaker 1 39:17

Another weird thing just real quick.

Speaker 5 39:20

that is conceptually kind of like what we were saying with the first Mad Max with the swinging wire thing. Did you guys notice that even in the first one, one of the police officers had the leg brace? The leg brace is so crucial to the costume design for all of these, for some reason, he loves it.

Speaker 1 39:40

that goes into uh like, uh the the history of the director, or uh him, uh uh miller being a miller, being a doctor, doctor uh, oh yeah, he was a doctor, who he was an emergency room doctor as well.

Speaker 2 39:57

So I that's really where a lot of the you know carnage I think uh comes from. Is you know?

Speaker 1 40:06

well and, by the way, I have a lot of respect for people like like a michael crichton style guy I've been doing a lot of reading on him who is so smart. He went to harvard medical school and became a doctor but then was like you know, actually I just I'd rather write books and then becomes like the most successful book writer and that directed movies and, like you know, I mean that's just so cool well, and it makes a lot of sense for miller too, because anyone who works in an er will tell you like half the people that come in there are motorcycle accidents oh yeah, well, I think he also has like commitment sorry, uh.

Speaker 5 40:37

It's also like his commitment to uh whenever like, especially in um in, like fury road and and furiosa, like the uh flight, like the being on fire threshold where the people are still alive for a while. That's a little detail that only an ER doctor would really splice in there.

Speaker 1 40:54

He does burn a lot of people and I think he said too once in an interview that being a doctor gave him great training to be a film director, because when you're a doctor you have critical situations where time is of the essence and people are always coming up to you asking you things and you have to be able to deal with that and you know, adjudicate and handle the situation. So but I mean that's, he's a. He's a cool, interesting guy and also the other interesting thing too is I brought my two friends to my second viewing of uh furiosa, him and his wife, and they had no idea what the hell it was even about, and and they liked it. But I was like they go, what other movies has this guy made? I was like Babe and Happy Feet and they were like blown away. You know what I mean.

Speaker 3 41:32

Come on, don't forget Lorenzo's Oil and.

Speaker 1 41:34

Lorenzo's Oil and Witches of Eastwick. I've not seen those, I'm sorry. I've seen.

Speaker 2 41:38

Witches of Eastwick.

Speaker 1 41:44

Oh, I need to watch it.

Speaker 2 41:46

Yeah, you know what else too Great effects in it.

Speaker 1 41:50

His Twilight Zone segment in the Twilight Zone movie like blows everybody else out of the water. It's incredible. Have you guys seen the Twilight Zone movie?

Speaker 2 41:58

Yeah, yeah, that's also in the Cisco and Ebert review and the best part of the movie. And they're like talking about how, how, oh yeah, spielberg really lets it down. Spielberg has kind of the worst. It's by far the worst, yeah, and the one thing is it's way too whimsical for fucking Twilight Zone.

Speaker 1 42:25

Well, I think he was trying to cover his ass after everybody died on the set of that movie. Which one did he do?

Speaker 3 42:31

in Twilight Zone? I can't remember.

Speaker 1 42:33

He did the remake of the William Shatner.

Speaker 3 42:36

Nightmare at 20,000.

Speaker 2 42:38

Or you're talking about George Miller. Did the? This one was Nightmare at 40,000.

Speaker 3 42:48

By the 80s, planes were going higher.

Speaker 1 42:51

What was that?

Speaker 3 42:53

No, the original was 20,000 feet. And then he's saying they changed in the 80s one to 40,000 feet. I was like okay, so airplanes can go higher.

Speaker 1 43:00

by then we're going faster, higher, longer. Dude. Ronald Reagan is president. It's the 80s, let's go.

Speaker 5 43:06

Faster, stronger.

Speaker 1 43:08

Exactly yeah, the 80s. Let's go um faster, stronger, exactly yeah, uh cobra, what are your thoughts on road warrior?

Speaker 2 43:15

I don't think we, I think you go, oh yeah, so, um, I mean, I love the road warrior. I uh, um, I'm really curious to see your, your country take out of, because, uh, one thing is I think it, uh, the road warrior, uh, is very much more comic book. It does not have the sort of like domestic tenderness of Mad Max. That I think. That's one One thing is like, you know, the relationship between, like Max and his wife, you know, is 100 percent like realistic, you know totally like kitchen sink kind of thing.

Speaker 2 43:50

And then, yeah, by the time you get to the second movie, it's like Batman, you know, it's like it's you're or you're like in a totally different world and it's more, I would say, or it kind of kind of reminds me of like what I like, about like survival horror games. You know where you're like, oh, there's a zombie in the hallway and I only have like two bullets left, you know sort of thing. And and that's what max is dealing with, like the beginning of that, with you know having no ammo. No, you know gas, you know uh, and uh, that's really what, uh, where the fun is. But, uh, I think that, uh, the road where it kind of links into furiosa, in the way that those movies are more like the general. You know where are uh the buster keaton movie.

Speaker 2 44:38

It definitely much more um, not as interpersonal. You know, it's not about the uh there's, there's a lot of, there's some uh interpersonal, but it's more of a hero's journey sort of thing. It's not as like mad max kind of has this uh thing where, yeah, it's more um uh, yeah, more like death wish or something like that or like you know, the the sort of the formation of an anti-hero, whereas like uh uh road warrior is like is like uh uh road warriors, like let's take the uh the anti-hero and let's turn him into a hero you know, like or he's gotta, he's gotta care about something and so, um, it definitely uh uh or just uh uh. I were talking before about uh uh, the first one being a like the pilot, um, I, I definitely see how, um, uh, this was kind of his uh uh.

Speaker 2 45:38

Or george miller's uh, like his own personal empire strikes back where he finally gets like a budget. He finally gets to kind of like articulate what he really wanted to say with the first one, because I think the first one he's just like using people who just he has access to. He's not even like casting for like uh, you know, yeah, oh, this, this is the perfect person to play this. It's like no, this is the person we have to play this role, or this is the person who showed up to the set. You know, because I know he was paying like stuntmen withmen with crates of beer. That's how low budget we're talking about. He's literally just paying people with beer, that's the most Australian shit I've ever heard.

Speaker 2 46:17

Yeah.

Speaker 4 46:19

Stuntmen working for beer.

Speaker 1 46:22

You can tell the guy with the feather in his head.

Speaker 5 46:25

You can tell the guy with the feather in his head. He showed up just for the fosters.

Speaker 2 46:29

To go into what what uh wolfman was was talking about, how this is so, uh, um, like, or yeah, this is. This is the iconography that people think about when they think about mad max, uh, and just how like this like launched a thousand ships. I mean, the italians just saw this movie and went let's make a thousand of these. It's like, and so there's like. You know, I don't know, there's like. Well, it was easy to do a bunch of scraps and shit.

Speaker 1 46:58

Ok, it's the post apocalypse, you know, like so you could see how this idea just proliferated. But like I'll say for me and I'll let Wolfman respond to this and shoot me down but Miller has this tendency in his movies to want to include these goofy, weird characters. He sort of has this Todd Browning streak, like have you ever seen Freaks? Where he's like let me get every little weirdo and I'll just put them in a movie. My issue with Road Warriors first of all, I don't think the aesthetics of it are that great. I think everybody living in the colony looks stupid and goofy.

Speaker 1 47:29

Matt max, which maybe makes max look cooler, I don't know, um, but also we just there's so much cutting away to little barbarian child could do without it. Bruce spence, the I think he's so annoying and every time we spend time with him and he's trying to convince the glam 80s gal to like fly, I'm just like cut it. You know it gets bogged down with all this weird goofy stuff. And obviously the, the, the chases are incredible. It's all great but like I don't know, it just doesn't grab me in the same way. I, I don't. I I think that mad max the first one's better, and I think thunderdome is better, but I mean, am I wrong? I mean, what am I wrong about, you know? Is that too vague?

Speaker 4 48:12

no, I mean I think that could be, that I mean a lot of that could just be a matter of taste.

Speaker 4 48:16

And I will always with especially with a series like this I will always add I mean I will take things with a grain of salt and always add the caveat that I may feel very different. I may have felt very differently about these movies had Road Warrior not been the first one that I'd seen. That was the first one, that was the one that kind of built my impression of this series. So if I'd seen one of the other ones first, I might feel more affection for that as opposed to the Road Warrior. So if I'd seen one of the other ones first, I might feel more affection for that as opposed to the Road Warrior. I think part of what I liked about the Road Warrior so much too and this comes from seeing it when I did I was in the fourth grade it has like the whole plot, the whole movie feels like like something you would come up with just playing with your friends like being on your bikes, playing in the neighborhood, playing in the playground.

Speaker 4 49:21

Be like, okay, I'm this guy, I'm Mad Max. And be like, okay, well, I'm a bad guy, my name's Lord.

Speaker 4 49:27

Humongous Lord, humongous yeah it feels like it's playing and it's like it has that kind of fun energy to it and I get the the kind of goofiness I think that. I think that's. I think that's just his australian sensibility. All the movies have like a run at that. But yeah, they have like they have. They have a goofy kind of Australian comedy streak and they have a let's get a deformed or mentally retarded person streak. Yeah, they have that in all of them.

Speaker 1 49:58

Very true.

Speaker 2 49:59

I think that, like I'm sorry I lost my train of thought, go ahead.

Speaker 1 50:13

I guess for me there are real flashes of brilliance in Road Warrior. The scene I love the most is maybe when Lord Humongous is giving him the ultimatum. They're trying to get ready to go to race out of there. They cut to him at the very dusk. He's like I will destroy everybody. Then he's crucifying the two people he captured, even having people strapped to the front of cars. I mean, that's something obviously miller is very much into and was like, oh, and my new mad max, he'll be strapped to a car for, like you know, the first half hour of the movie, right? I mean that's then like you said, monty, about the leg brace. I think that was like he. He has all these little weird quirks where he's like yeah, yeah, I just want to do that again. I like better, I like leg braces. Those are cool For whatever reason, and I really like a director when he has little weird hangups like that. People give Tarantino a hard time for the feet thing, but I have to believe it's maybe more than sexual the most charming thing about him.

Speaker 1 51:02

Yeah, I mean, I love that If a director does some weird thing you're like.

Speaker 2 51:06

This is weird, thing, you know yeah, like brian de palma has to like watch every woman in the shower. You know on the steadicam, you know so yeah, and who's complaining, yeah?

Speaker 2 51:17

yeah, I was gonna say I remember what I was gonna say is uh, but uh, what wolfman was or makes me think about was, is just like, uh, this sort of like like how, uh, the road warrior you could be, like something you put together with your, your friends in the backyard, sort of thing is uh, uh, that's like, I think what like imprinted that movie onto you know, the brains of, of course, of tons of italians, but uh, but of like the you know, the movie going public was just the um, the energy of it, where there's a lot of takes they're using in the road, where there are not usable takes, there's like, uh, I, I remember, um, I, I didn't, I didn't watch it uh, this go around. But uh, the last time I watched, I remember uh, freeze framing and going through and being like, oh yeah, there's totally like a camera in the shot or there's, you know, there's a, there's a lot that you can see.

Speaker 1 52:18

Uh, uh, yeah, there's a moment where max is not wearing boots. He's wearing, like different shoes, and then they cut back to him and he's wearing boots again and I was like but it's.

Speaker 2 52:27

I mean, it's the same thing with die hard, with the changing uh, you know wife beater color, where it's like you don't care because you're so involved in the action that's happening that it's like somebody could tell you afterwards you'd be like I don't remember that at all. Like you know.

Speaker 4 52:41

So I always thought the wife beater changed color because he crawled through the vents and it was just dust.

Speaker 2 52:46

There's so much dust, but it turned green. It's like it was a mossy, very mossy. Uh, when was the last time?

Speaker 5 52:54

you cleaned your vents?

Speaker 2 52:55

how much molds up there yeah oh yeah that's true, uh, but yeah, uh, good, has anybody seen uh, does anybody? Has anybody seen like uh, 1990, the bro Warriors or any of the Rip-offs?

Speaker 3 53:11

No, the rip-offs.

Speaker 2 53:13

I'd say Cherry 2000. If you guys have not seen Cherry 2000, I highly recommend that. A very underrated Mad Max rip-off it's like a. It's like a you know even more ridiculous version, or like uh. I would almost say like getting close to uh. Where the kentucky fried movie guy.

Speaker 1 53:43

I'm like it's got ben john Johnson in it and Tim Thomerson, who I love from the fantastic Trancer movies. You guys seen Trancer yeah, no okay, those are good they're really good. Yeah, I don't know I don't know, cobra, it looks pretty terrible, I don't. I mean, I might put Cherry 2000 on my list but it's gonna be at the bottom, I would just watch it like you might, but it's going to be at the bottom.

Speaker 2 54:10

I would just watch it. It's a lot of fun, but it definitely gets. Yeah, it's right in there with the Looks pretty wild.

Speaker 3 54:21

There's a polka dot there If you don't like it.

Speaker 1 54:24

Cobra will reimburse you.

Speaker 5 54:26

Okay, I've got Sean.

Speaker 1 54:27

Thompson in the chat and he says yes, I've seen all the rip-off spritations of Mad you. Okay, I've got Sean Thompson in the in the chat and he says yes, I've seen all the ripoffs, whoa All. Hey, Sean, start posting some of those in the chat. Well, you know.

Speaker 2 54:38

Well, there's, there's another one you might've seen Uh, it's Brian Treachery Smith's dead end driving. That is a uh the excellent, uh mad max, or it. It feels like it's in the universe because it's like, uh, there's a um the main character, his, his brother, is like got this uh um post service and and it's like all these tow trucks go out and they, you know, roaming about, because there's all these car crashes, you know, because of the wild youth, you know okay, well, that's interesting yeah, do here.

Speaker 5 55:15

Boys have struck and the toe guys.

Speaker 1 55:19

The toe guy, that'd be a good. We need a west side story of that.

Speaker 3 55:22

Um can I just uh to one other. Uh, quick comment. Uh, I wanted to respond to the order of watching comment. I think that detective wolfman mentioned. It's like that's an interesting point. Uh, because I watched these in chronological order and when I watched mad max, the first one, for the first time, I was like, well, it's, that's, that's good, it was really liked it. But is is that all that it is? I mean, is that is that what it's all about? And then I popped in this one and I was like holy, like this is okay, now I get it now I get why this is still around, like because this is a totally different experience altogether.

Speaker 3 55:54

It doesn't diminish one or the other. But I don't think that had they just replicated the same movie as mad max, one again for number two, if they hadn't gone into a totally different direction, I don't think this franchise would still exist in the. They'd still be making movies off of it.

Speaker 1 56:09

And I have to suspect too that Mad Max one was kind of like like hey, I need to make a slasher movie, cause that's cheap and that's going to sell. I need to make a revenge movie, I mean, that's what's going to, that's what's selling you know, let can recap that movie, but okay. Somebody up to the task?

Speaker 3 56:31

Definitely my least favorite. I would let the honor go to someone who actually really likes the movie, I think.

Speaker 5 56:37

Well as the intro to the series. I have a lot of strong feelings about it. When I was in summer camp, the two-man enter, one-man leave for the fight clubs that would take place, uh, after hours. Uh were a treat uh to watch and uh, I hadn't seen the movie at that point and so when I finally saw it was, uh, it's I, I can only it's kind of like how, uh, in star wars, when the ewoks came in, uh, where the kids loved it but, like everybody else hated it, like that was uh very much.

Speaker 5 57:07

I was in the the kids camp. Um, it's uh, the best way that I can describe the plot of it is uh, what? The? The story structure of the plot is straight up um brave new world by huxley. It's that. It's beat for beat. It's the exact same uh you know when you, when you get introduced to like the saxophone and the fruit from the rulers of Bargain Town, which is where most of the movie takes place, and you're seeing the upper strata of society, you mean Barter. Town. What did I say? Bargain?

Speaker 1 57:42

Town which is going to be my new chain of grocery stores. You're not getting a bargain there, excuse me, you're not getting a bargain there, excuse me.

Speaker 5 57:54

But yeah, in Barter Town you kind of see like the upper strata of society and then immediately Max's shoveling shit where he then has to go into the Thunderdome. He loses. Well, he wins, but due to some I don't know another revenge plot, he gets kicked out of Barter Town and then goes and finds this lost group of like again like the Brave New World of it all. I don't want to nix you guys on YouTube for monetization, but the mentally challenged children that he goes and gets rescued by.

Speaker 1 58:25

Why are they mentally challenged? Why are they mentally challenged? Well, I mean.

Speaker 4 58:31

They're primitive is what they are.

Speaker 1 58:33

Yeah, yeah, yeah, they're like Peter Pan kids.

Speaker 3 58:36

Yeah, they're the Lost Boys, right, I mean.

Speaker 5 58:38

Me talk pretty one day is what I'm trying to say.

Speaker 1 58:41

Yeah.

Speaker 5 58:41

Okay, all right.

Speaker 1 58:42

Yeah, no, but I was one that I was watching Thunderdome and I saw the first half hour. I'm like this is sick that I was watching Thunderdome and I saw the first like half hour. I'm like this is sick. Like everyone says this movie sucks. Like this is awesome. Yeah, I liked Master Blaster. I thought he was dope when I was a kid, for whatever reason my dad would used to he's not a movie guy at all, but for whatever reason he would just say who run Barter Town all the time. Like you thought it was funny.

Speaker 1 59:03

Okay, maybe he saw it like as you know rocks and I had no idea what the hell he was talking about. But like, uh, I thought that was excellent, like the fighting with those like ropes and the grabbing the weapons, and I was like this is like so cool. And then he goes and sees the kids, which I didn't hate but I I could. I was like, okay, well, I see where this is where everyone hates it when we have sort of this ewok element come into it and the movie like very much softens it, almost like it's like a rated r movie. That just becomes like a pg movie like halfway through.

Speaker 5 59:32

Right, well, this is kind of this is kind of my problem with it and this is kind of what I was uh you know uh, derogatory words aside, um, it's uh the. The character of max is basically completely betrayed uh with this that we've seen in the past two movies like obviously he has like you know uh, he has like the candy coating with like the, the soft inside uh that we see in uh in the first two movies, but um, this one, it's like why is he going out of his way for these people like like the max that we know uh, the second that he wakes up, he wouldn't be invested with these people at all, he would just leave. He would be like like the your viewfinder, uh like none of that matters anymore. I'm gone and I think that it's uh it okay. So kind of uh, the through line that I see through all of these movies is uh a scrapping it out for budget.

Speaker 5 1:00:23

The first movie, uh, just like you were saying, the vengeance slasher, just so he can get financing. Uh, they cut a lot of corners. I still think that it's, you know, like rules and boundaries, uh like elevate, uh like true artists and true talent. Um, what we were saying about uh road warrior, with like the cameras being in the shots and some of the inconsistencies? Uh, because he was putting it all into the sadistic special effects and this one is he got exactly the budget that he wanted and he cut a lot of corners and made a lot of compromises.

Speaker 1 1:00:58

I think that there is a whiff about this movie. It reminds me a lot of like Temple of Doom, you know of like. Okay, I'm going to try to be like Spielberg. We got a big singer star in the movie.

Speaker 5 1:01:06

It feels like it was directed by Spielberg.

Speaker 4 1:01:09

Yeah, well, and his producing partner died. So the guy's producing partner for the first two films had passed and he didn't want to do this movie for a long time, and he dedicates it to him at the end but, yeah, him not being around, it was inevitable to be a very different type of film that was uh byron kennedy, yeah yeah, because I was watching the opening credits and, like it said, directed by george miller and like some other guy too, I was like what the fuck?

Speaker 1 1:01:36

but apparently he was so um, beside himself for the loss of his partner. He just wanted to bring somebody else on to be a sounding board for him. But I mean, obviously he's found his balls with like the last two mad max entries, right, I mean he's gotten back to that. But yeah, I think there was a move for him to try to make it more commercial and you know I actually was not. It was not as big of a hit as road warrior, right, um, but uh, no, there's a lot that I like about it.

Speaker 1 1:02:01

I don't mind the little kids. I don't think mad max's character is betrayed, necessarily. I think it would have been better had, instead of those kids being stupid and wandering off on their own, had they been like kidnapped by the evil barter town people. I think maybe that would have been more of a catalyst than him just going to help them from being dumb. But my biggest problem in this is, like it's just, it just sort of gets muddled at the end with like what even is going on and who are we against? And who's bad Like they all of a sudden? Master blaster is good and like they want to take him along and he's dressed like a little cowboy western bank teller or something yeah, he's not a hostage.

Speaker 5 1:02:33

He should have been a hostage. Yeah right, like like, this is kind of like where I'm coming from. We're like where did the, the bite of the series, come from?

Speaker 4 1:02:40

well, it's pg-13. So from the jump, yeah, from the jump, audiences had to have known oh no, something's, something's wrong, something's going on Like Conan the Destroyer yeah. Well, and I'm glad, Monty, I'm glad you mentioned the Ewoks earlier, because I would say that, in my opinion, although that Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, in my opinion, is the worst Mad Max film, it's the best Ewoks film.

Speaker 1 1:03:06

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 4 1:03:12

It reminded me of those Ewoks TV shows, tv shows kind of when they're in the yeah, no, the two ewoks movies where they go up against like that big giant and I think wilford brimley or some old dudes. Yes, yeah, like it reminded me of that and I had a similar, a similar feeling, like the first act you know I'm on board with, even though, like it is, it's just noticeably polished.

Speaker 5 1:03:31

You know, like you can't pop music in the intro was my first sign on the rewatch of like I thought that was so dope, that pop music. And then really I had I had to recheck to see if I was still watching the same movie, because I watched all of these yesterday in a row. I'm like did I get hit the wrong link?

Speaker 4 1:03:48

well the thing. Another, another element that it suffers from is, I think, part of why the road warrior works is it's different enough from the first mad max, like he basically reinvents the world. He takes it even farther with this one. He didn't reinvent the world enough to warrant the changes that he made.

Speaker 4 1:04:13

It was too you know okay it was too close to road warrior but it was too soft, and also with the kids, with the primitive kids and their little history and their weird language. Like I, I try to resist nitpicking a movie, especially one that is not. That's doing us the service of not getting lost in world building and lore, because I fucking hate both of those things. If you want to build a world, go write a fucking book series, don't make a movie. But with those kids, like civilization, in less than one human lifetime civilization has collapsed. How, how did in one generation, these kids get raised with a different language in an oasis in the middle of Australia and where all their parents like it, just it, it stretches like 16 years old and disbelief.

Speaker 1 1:05:08

No, I get that no-transcript obviously had something to say. I just want to. I disagree. I think that's because I think it's it's better to view these movies as like the legend of max and it's all these sort of like discon. You know what I'm saying, right? So that doesn't really matter, but we got a great comment from sean thompson where he said ewok exploitation in the chat fucking hilarious and uh, but cobra, go ahead and pop in. What are you gonna say?

Speaker 2 1:05:28

oh yeah, well, uh, I was just gonna say this is kind of uh, the uh amplification or the disneyfication of george miller with uh beyond thunderdome, because what does he, what does he go on to make? Is uh later he's you know, he's making stuff like happy feet, right, um, but uh he's, he's got dual.

Speaker 2 1:05:49

He's saying something about the duality of man right going to kill, right I mean yeah he's uh he's good no, I would say I love thunderdome, I think it's, I, I, I, I love that movie, but definitely it's. It's the same thing I feel about, like, uh, road versus Furiosa is or we'll get to later, but I definitely think that like, or, or who who said it? Was it a? Uh, um, who or who? Who said it? Uh, was it uh, oh, wolfman, did you or did you say it was like, uh, basically, uh, not, not enough of a world change, uh, yeah yeah, between yeah and so that's kind of like how I felt about furiosa.

Speaker 2 1:06:44

It's like okay, we didn't change, change the world, but I, I do feel, uh, I I was gonna say I I do feel like thunderdome does that in a way that it's like it is way bigger, I mean like the thunderdome set itself is probably bigger than the uh, uh, than the road warrior, uh gas town, you know, uh, yeah, miller said in an interview one interview that he.

Speaker 1 1:07:11

He spent more on paper cups on thunderdome than what he paid mel gibson for the first movie. You know, he had some money this time. I think the movie looks spectacular. I think mel gibson, yeah, yeah, after they cut his hair I'm like this is the iconic, like he looks amazing, he looks so cool and it's the first movie in 1980 is, or, uh, 1979, uh, is uh like half a million dollars, right?

Speaker 2 1:07:35

so then the second movie is, uh like what I think, uh, let's see, it's uh, 4.5, it's like, but that's the australian dollar, which I I do not know, sure, sure, um, but then this one's like a 10 million dollar movie, uh, which you know, uh, and at well, the one thing is it like in 85, uh, so like the first star wars was 10 million dollars. That was in like the late 70s. So yeah inflation. It's not exactly a lot of money.

Speaker 5 1:08:11

No, it's a lot of money. That's a lot of money, especially for a movie in the 80s, to get what I'm thinking is that Close Encounters of the Third Kind was $19 million.

Speaker 2 1:08:21

That's 1979. You know what's crazy.

Speaker 1 1:08:25

The Star Trek. The Motion Picture cost $30 million in 1979. Can you even fucking believe that? Isn't that stupid? Isn't that because the Star Trek yeah, star Trek, the Motion Picture was like the most expensive movie ever made in 1979. And I don't know where that money went.

Speaker 4 1:08:41

That had to have been to pay for IP and to pay the talent, because there's no way you're spending that much money on those fucking cheap-ass interior spaceships.

Speaker 3 1:08:50

No, they owned the IP already at the time. So that's why they made it, Because they had their own IP for a science fiction project.

Speaker 1 1:08:57

I don't know if the $30 million was how they tried to make it for 10 years.

Speaker 3 1:09:01

They definitely did not pay the ancillary cast much for those movies. They weren't paying them for a lot is uh.

Speaker 2 1:09:09

I think what happened with the uh with the star trek emotion picture was, uh was basically like they had like a company that had like basically built a facility to do the effects and then they just said like, oops, we spend all the money, like, and then they had to get uh douglas trumpleull to come in at the last minute and he had guys like Greg Jean, who's like the genius model maker, and come in and do things at the last minute. So I think that's what happened. But yeah, $30,000. Just hand over fist stealing from the studio and do things at the last minute. So I think that's what happened on them the cast of Daughters just hand over stealing from the studio.

Speaker 1 1:09:54

It's like a money laundering scheme.

Speaker 5 1:09:56

That's awesome. I support that.

Speaker 3 1:09:58

It was all very just saying that's not right. Do it again, do it again, do it again.

Speaker 1 1:10:04

Can we put?

Speaker 3 1:10:04

JFK in there.

Speaker 1 1:10:05

Hey, you know what?

Speaker 2 1:10:07

If you fuck with Robert Wise, okay, you're on my shit list, okay oh I, I take motion pictures.

Speaker 3 1:10:13

One of my favorite movies. Man, I've been stalking syndrome into loving that movie so much okay, I mean, I like it I. I support him andromeda strain, but anyway I think we should get back to uh the beyond thunderdome for a second go ahead.

Speaker 1 1:10:27

What do you got?

Speaker 3 1:10:27

yeah, I um, although I agree that the world is not very different compared to the road warrior beyond Thunderdome for a second, go ahead. What do you got? Yeah, although I agree that the world is not very different compared to Road Warrior, I think the tone of the movie feels very different. I mean, it's a much slower movie and the first half hour, I agree, is great as we set up that. Yeah, I think so.

Speaker 3 1:10:46

I think the movie comes to a grinding halt as soon as he, after the Thunderdome match and he's exiled into the wilderness or whatever you want to call it, whatever it's called, and he meets the little children, becomes like Peter Pan or meets Lord of the Flies. I found that part to be extremely boring. I lost complete interest in the movie at that point. Otherwise, beginning yes. And then, george, you mentioned you thought the movie looked good on a visual level. I don't know. I thought the movie looked hideous. I thought the color palette was extremely washed out, all the kind of rich browns and tan color that we saw in the previous movie. Everything is just like ashen gray in this movie to me and it just looked very washed out and ugly.

Speaker 1 1:11:25

I mean, Barter Town is a little underlit in my opinion, but I thought that the little enclave of the kids was amazing. There was a wonderful dolly shot where we flip around to Mel Gibson and there's a fire behind him but then they put like these nice orange lights behind his head and they dolly on him and I'm just like that's amazing.

Speaker 3 1:11:43

I don't remember that part, but anyway, what was I going to say?

Speaker 1 1:11:46

you're not a male sexual like me, but you know.

Speaker 3 1:11:51

The Road Warrior was definitely the kinkiest movie, but this one introduces like midget fetish into the franchise. I feel like Well it's like In the subsequent movies where he's obsessed with midgets and little people and putting them in like weird situations like that.

Speaker 1 1:12:08

And then like, also simultaneously, like abusing them as well.

Speaker 5 1:12:11

Yes, especially in Furiosa. Yeah, it comes back with a vengeance in that one, exactly, absolutely.

Speaker 3 1:12:18

It's just so. You mentioned the Todd Browning illusion, you know, as compared to freaks, and so there you go, that's where. That's where this is where it starts, right here. Also, the weird aspect of harping on the pig feces being turned into methane gas. Just a very odd predilection or preoccupation that the movie has Talking about the energy crisis and all that. It's just very weird.

Speaker 1 1:12:41

They were really impressed with that idea, which is kind of why I wish we would have gotten a Mad Max film around Iraq wartime. I think that would have been. Maybe that would have been sick, right, because obviously it was the oil. I wish we would have gotten a Mad Max film around.

Speaker 5 1:12:49

Iraq war time, I think that would have been.

Speaker 1 1:12:49

Maybe that would have been sick, right, because obviously it was the oil embargo of the late seventies and eighties. It's like what, what?

Speaker 3 1:12:56

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 1:12:57

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So maybe that would have been and I think they were supposed to do it with with Mel in 2002, but then the Iraq war like fucked up the dollar of whatever middle eastern country they were going to shoot in and the budget went haywire and they had to cancel it. But um, but anyway. I like tina turner in the movie.

Speaker 3 1:13:14

She's great. I like the songs I just. This movie bored me.

Speaker 1 1:13:18

It needed to cut about a half an hour out my tina turner's good, but it's like what the hell is her? What is she? What's her point? She's awesome the movie should have taken place entirely in barter town and it should have been about him allying with her to overthrow master blaster or whatever yeah, and then not right and uh, little children lost.

Speaker 3 1:13:36

Boys yearning for their boeing 747.

Speaker 4 1:13:40

Well it can still end with a train finale, like they kind of. They kind of waste the idea of okay, now we're gonna have a chase, but it's on a train. We're to have a train sequence.

Speaker 1 1:13:52

Which was cool. I mean, it wasn't as good as Road Warrior, but there were still a lot of great moments, like when that guy is doing those acrobatic flips over the stuff that are whipping past. I was like that's great, but it was just sort of bloodless and goofy. I liked the idea of the cow print car, but I didn't really need max to drive that car. You know that can like go by as a joke and you know, but I don't need like. You know what I'm saying.

Speaker 4 1:14:16

Yeah, it took the teeth.

Speaker 1 1:14:18

Yeah.

Speaker 2 1:14:19

Yeah.

Speaker 5 1:14:19

No, I mean that's a great, that's a that's great.

Speaker 2 1:14:25

Or a great metaphor for the that's great, or great metaphor for this whole movie is it just takes the teeth like right out of like. That's what I think I've always had a problem with is the like, the tribe that left the, all the kids of, like. That made me cringe when I was, you know, I was like 12 years old watching it, like you know, and but as I get older, I actually when I was, you know I was like 12 years old watching it. Like you know, yeah and but as I get older.

Speaker 2 1:14:56

I actually I appreciate it more now because with the subsequent, like Fury Road and Furiosa, I kind of like a lot of the world building and naming that George Miller does now and I'm kind of like, ok, this is, this is kind of like breaking down the psychology of what happens to. You know, all of these people like like Lord Humongous or whatever, where it's like when Lord Humongous is introduced in in uh road warrior, you're just like thinking you're like wow, like it's like how far in the future are we? Like what has happened? That is like where everybody can be like an assless chaps and like you know doing, you know just murdering people like left and right and there's no consequence. Like where, where are we?

Speaker 2 1:15:57

Because in the in mad max we're like uh, a character at the beginning is like upset that some somebody blasphemes. He's like I don't, I don't have to work with a blasphemer, you know. And it's like now we're, now we're in a place where there's no law, there's nothing, and it's like uh, and they and they, you know. Subsequent, the subsequent films take that to even a more ridiculous place.

Speaker 4 1:16:23

But that's so prescient because here we are living through our own civilizational decline and we're seeing the emergence of the trads.

Speaker 4 1:16:32

And so this guy, this guy's a real world trad cast and even though the whole world is falling apart around him and there are way more prescient things for him to be focused on he's clutching his pearls at his cop partner who's basically at this point, the cops are just hired thugs. They're basically, if they were not getting paid to be cops, they would be in these roving gangs, and that's part of that's part of Max's arc is the whole time he's fighting his love of being on the road, he's trying to control his love of being a fucking road hog and he's like no, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I got my wife, I got my kid, I'm gonna be a responsible man and and do my duty to society. And then when his family gets taken from him, he's like fuck it, I'm gonna be the worst road warrior, I'm gonna be the worst road warrior, I'm going to be the most violent, psychotic animal on the road. And that's where he ends up. Here you have this guy who's getting his panties in a twist over someone blaspheming.

Speaker 1 1:17:31

Yeah, yeah, worrying about minor things while everything falls down around, yeah.

Speaker 2 1:17:35

And also the fact that, like Someone's, desperately, trying to get to hold on to a semblance of the old world.

Speaker 2 1:17:42

Yes, that Max and Max and his wife and kid, they go to like, oh, they're going to go out to the country, they're going to go out to the middle of nowhere, or they're heading north, or whatever the gas station attendant says, but that it's like alone, it alone, it's like okay, you have to like there's this whole like uh, supply chain that has to like support you if you're like living out in the middle of nowhere, like like that.

Speaker 2 1:18:13

So, so there's still like that reliance on like, oh, yeah, there's gonna be a gas station and there's going to be, you know, there's going to be food available and stuff like that, whereas, yeah, when, when it's like the road warrior, it's just like nothing exists anymore. There's no government, like the president is dead, like any any sort of authority is completely, uh, blown away. You know at that point and uh, but yeah, our I was saying before about the ripoffs is, is, uh, that's definitely the place that where, uh, uh, you know, the these low budget filmmakers love to be, it's just like oh, oh, we don't have to like have any of that, we can just have people in, you know, uh, uh we can just have like uh everybody wearing uh like torn up clothing and ass of chaps, you know and that's.

Speaker 2 1:19:06

That's all we need like that.

Speaker 5 1:19:08

So I'm gonna level with you, though if, if the, if mad max actually did go and like address all of like those steps that you just like, provided I'd be like this is unnecessary and annoying. Like, yeah, he's like a cop who, like he's an action man who, like, knows how to survive with his family, like he would just have, I, I think, the suspension of disbelief of him having a couple extra tanks of gas to make it to like up north. Quote unquote uh, like, yeah, it's kind of something that it's uh, I'm kind of glad that the series evolved into this like a crisis of supply management, because it's uh, like you're right, but at the same time, like I, the world is still kind of together, like I, I think I don't really, if they were to address that, I'd call it like reddit, you know well, a hundred percent it lends.

Speaker 4 1:19:55

It lends credence to my theory of the uh forever moving inland hypothesis of the series. Because they are so close to the coast they still have trade, even if they, specifically, are low on resources. They're near the ports where the resources are coming in, so they're going to get first dibs on everything. So things by the coast aren't going to be as bad as they are farther inland coast aren't going to be as bad as they are farther inland.

Speaker 1 1:20:20

Well, and then something that that miller does too, to talk about this idea of like, explaining how we've escalated to the point where assless chaps hockey mask guy has has people in his thrall to run around in his gang, like miller does, something I think is unnecessary, inferior, said man max, where he starts it out with this sort of like narrative you know of. We hear all the people on the news saying, oh, resources are the nuclear bomb went off and it's like, yeah, we get it. Dude, like you know, get to the story. Right, I get it nuclear. What it happened, you know it's, it's a mess.

Speaker 1 1:20:45

And I think that the mad max movies are interesting because, like money said this, this crisis of resource management. I mean that's really what all the movies are about to a certain extent, right, I mean that's what? That's what the wives are that are in the enclave. I mean it's all about conserving resources, which people do all the time. But we, like, like cobra was saying, we have a supply chain that makes this less of a pressing concern. But when you take it all away, you have to realize is that we're incredibly dependent on these systems, and if we don't have them, you're not going to fucking make it right, I mean, unless you're cool like mad max well, and also to go back up, sorry real quick.

Speaker 5 1:21:25

It's the uh the whole like leather daddy situation of uh road warrior. It's uh, yeah, all of like the good women are taken or they're like mutilated, uh beyond repair, like I actually think that the bomb going off is something that we need, uh as an audience, to go and see. Oh, things are way worse than we think.

Speaker 1 1:21:41

I thought you meant we need as a society.

Speaker 5 1:21:45

Oh no, I mean hey, we need that Bob. Let's see how November goes yeah.

Speaker 1 1:21:52

Log off from your cabin.

Speaker 3 1:21:54

Yeah. Yeah, and that's mentioned in Furiosa too, when you see the birth of some of the babies and they've got three legs or whatever, and everybody's horribly mutated. Either that's through inbreeding, which is not explicitly stated, or it's from nuclear fallout or something like that.

Speaker 5 1:22:10

Well, yeah, in Furiosa they gave birth to that woman with the two heads who just got married recently.

Speaker 1 1:22:16

What? Oh, there was a twin baby with two legs.

Speaker 5 1:22:22

That's like what?

Fury Road and Furiosa Analysis

Speaker 1 1:22:23

oh yeah, yeah, two heads, yeah, yeah but no, actually, you know, when I saw fury road and well, we can wrap this up if you guys had to go, we can go. But, like, um, I liked fury road. Fine, you know, it was great, I liked it a lot and and it was really, people were really hyped on that movie and I thought it was really good too. But when I saw furiosa I think it retroactively makes fury road a better movie and, um, I thought it was dope. And I know, detective, you you kind of doubted me and you were like, uh, you know what's? Uh, is it really good? And I'm like, yeah, because, like the dude, imperator jack is like such a badass character that like a movie like this needed. And he wasn't in the marketing materials at all. So I think everyone just thought it was going to be another sort of girl boss Rey Skywalker thing and it's really not Right. I mean, go ahead.

Speaker 4 1:23:10

Well. So, yeah, I like Furiosa well enough. The Imperator Jack guy was cool. I thought it was interesting that he's in the cop uniform. So it leads you to wonder, well, well, was he also a cop before the fall, or is this just an outfit that he found and he was like, hey, it fits and it looks cool, you know. So that kind of that kind of adds a little bit of mystery to that character.

Speaker 4 1:23:31

So I went back, I watched fury road again. Uh, for the first time since I saw it in theaters and like a lot of people I saw it in theaters I really dug it. I think I saw it two or three times. It was a big deal. Uh, I watched it again and it's not that it doesn't hold up, like it's still a dope movie. But since more time has passed, the visual effects have become more apparent. Um, that are kind of overlaid with the practical effects. And the thing that stands out the most to me is you're really having Furiosa and Max in that movie is completely redundant, because they're the same character. Basically. Both of them can do what the other one can do. They're both just kind of stoic and gruff. Neither one of them really has any characterization. Tom hardy's kind of crazy in the beginning, but that's about it. Uh, you really, it really just needed to be a furiosa movie or a mad max movie.

Speaker 5 1:24:32

You don't need both of them at all and this is the biggest problem when it comes to uh, like reboots, uh, or like spin-offs or something is uh, when you reignite a franchise like this, you kind of need to pass the torch onto, like I like. Usually it's like um, like in indiana jones, like passing on uh the torch to uh, you know, shia labeouf, for instance, um, and it's you kind of have to do this in the sense of like, uh, like reuniting, like the spirit is passed on to like another protagonist. But I completely agree, it's uh, mad max just shouldn't have been in it. This could have been a mad max movie, uh, with just furiosa, or it could have been just tom hardy saving them all it could be that the furiosa character dies and goes.

Speaker 1 1:25:15

Oh, you need to get these girls to this place on the map easy easy or it's it's a

Speaker 4 1:25:19

dilemma right or the simple thing is to, or, if you're gonna have both of them, make it to where, so all right. So furiosa has one arm, make it to where she's got one real leg. Make it to where all she can do is drive the truck and she can't fight. And make the truck so complicated that max can't drive it. All he can do is fight, and that way you have a reason for both of these characters and give them. Give the woman some personality, please, for the love of god. Give any woman in a movie a fucking personality other than, uh, disapproval, uh, even, even even the wives. The wives are more more clearly drawn thaniosa is, and they're more captivating, and it's not because they're prettier looking, but each one of them has a singular personality that informs their decisions. Furiosa and Max have no personality.

Speaker 5 1:26:14

Yeah, and the wives have a quarter of the screen time, if that.

Speaker 1 1:26:18

I think that's a fair point and I think my wife I watched it again with her after we saw furiosa, which she really liked her point was, like you know, is mad max really even the star of this? And I go, yeah. But you know, in the other movies he kind of occupies this role too, especially in road warrior where he gets sidelined for so long, and it's like the story of the people in white where you know what what Too many fucking football pads I get if one or two people are wearing football pads.

Speaker 1 1:26:42

Why is everybody got to wear fucking football?

Speaker 2 1:26:44

pads. I guess what those football pads do not like defend from arrows, like worth a shit, like at all.

Speaker 4 1:26:50

Right, yeah Well the thing is, though, is in Fury in in in Road Warrior, it's made more explicit that they could not do this without Max. Without Max, they're never going to get out of there. In Fury Road, they probably could have.

Speaker 1 1:27:09

He helped.

Speaker 4 1:27:11

Especially when they have the war boy who joins them on their side.

Speaker 1 1:27:15

I would disagree with you, which, by the way, we get a proto-war boy in Thunderdome, by the way. Remember, there's a kid that looks like a war boy.

Speaker 4 1:27:23

in Thunderdome, by the way, remember, there's a kid that looks like a war boy with the black around his eyes.

Speaker 1 1:27:32

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I was going to say Max, does inferior come up with the plan because the girls were just going to like ride away somewhere else and he goes hey, what if we, you know, went back to the Citadel and took it over while they're gone? I mean, so he came up with the whole plan to save the day. Yeah, you know.

Speaker 3 1:27:41

Yeah, he does redeem himself by the end of the movie in becoming the protagonist, but for the majority of the movie he's not Charlize Theron's the lead of that movie, which is ironic because, in my opinion, in Furiosa, furiosa is not the lead of that movie at all.

Speaker 1 1:27:55

I think it's chris hemsworth movie, in my opinion, which makes that movie so much more interesting and so much better as a character as a character lead for that movie his idea in furiosa to be like this would be the story of furiosa set against this war of two competing clans. I was like what a great idea, like it's so cool, it's gonna do but but also it's go ahead.

Speaker 4 1:28:16

oh well, I'll just say real quickly so you made the point that it makes Fury Road a better movie. I mean, I think it does, but not in the right way, because, from my opinion, watching those movies together, immortan Joe is not a villain. If anything, he's the most sensible guy in this whole universe. He's the only one actually trying to maintain a civilization. And yeah, it's brutal.

Speaker 5 1:28:40

He's literally a peacekeeper.

Speaker 1 1:28:41

Yeah's, it's brutal and it's unfair, but I mean they say it in the meeting of like we don't have enough resources to give everybody equal shares, uh, you know I hate to be a morton joe offender, a defender, but like, obviously he has a little bit of an interesting idea about propagating his progeny right which maybe I think would be disagreeable to people in certain conditions today. But uh, I mean you have the green place of all these nice hippies, but they literally just walked into that and are just trying to keep it up. He literally made nothing you know out of something, right. I mean, like he had rocks and he turned it into like this thing where he's got water and things. So yeah, morton joe, like I mean I get that he's evil, but like, in this kind of a world, like he's the only guy you know, he's the only game in town and I mean and you can't have your revenge film does not work when the villain is as likable as chris hemsworth is.

Speaker 4 1:29:35

Even when he's doing despicable things, he he's too charismatic, he's too fun to watch, especially when your heroine is the typical female action movie lead, where she has no personality at all, she's stoic. Her whole thing is to just be silent.

Speaker 3 1:30:00

I'm not on board with this one she learns to open up by the end of the movie.

Speaker 1 1:30:03

I think, guys, I disagree as well I disagree and I think that I like the character of furiosa played by anna taylor joy more than I did the charlie's theron version. I agree, maybe because she's like you know, I don't know. Yeah, but like I, I liked her, I wanted her to succeed and I also thought it was interesting that she was allowed to have a little bit of a romance with my guy, which is usually off limits for these girl boss heroes, right I was pleasantly surprised by that, but they never show him kiss no kissing I don't think they have to.

Speaker 5 1:30:30

I don't think they have and also keep in mind like they stink.

Speaker 1 1:30:32

So bad, fuck out but, you know what, though, this is? This is back to miller's like issue with in Max Romance, the hot girl with the white football pads in Road Warrior. You'd think, oh, her and Max are going to get together. No, miller just kills her brutally right away and then she's just gone and gets run over by a semi-truck. So maybe this is sort of inherent in him and not the corporate hug that always made me upset in that Rogue One movie. I think is like patient zero of this, where you've got these two people that are both hot, they've both gone through this giant adventure together. At the end they're about to get blown up by a nuclear bomb and they just like hug each other. I'm like, come on, maybe kissing would be a little lame, but do something else.

Speaker 3 1:31:12

But for as much trauma as she goes through in the movie and she actually does she undergoes, I mean severe trauma from everything that goes on in her life, furiosa I mean, the fact that she is not as embittered and and reclusive and cut off from the, from any other human contact by the end of the movie shows that there's probably more to her than than we would expect from another character in that situation. She learns to the driver guy and we'll see her in the next movie how she reacts to max, which is cold at first because she's untrusting naturally anyone would be in that situation, right and then she realizes that he's not the enemy yeah, which is I thought there than just oh, I hate all men, or whatever you know or like I

Speaker 4 1:31:58

don't think it's a man-hating thing, I think it's uh. And I I can't believe I'm gonna say this because part of part of what I like about these movies is that they're. They're not, they're the opposite of the marvel movies, kind of. But like just a little moment to of where, like just to give her more humanity, like whether it's Fury Road or it's Furiosa, like have someone make a little funny comment and just have her laugh at it, just anything any levels to her emotional state but you wouldn't.

Speaker 1 1:32:34

I agree, fear and anger.

Speaker 1 1:32:43

I get what you're saying, yeah and I'm not one of these guys that harps and sorry, oh, just real quick, I'm not one of these guys that harps endlessly on like mary sue's and like you know the whole thing of like oh, disney ruined star war, all that shit, I'm not, I'm done with that, that's not my wheelhouse. But like there's a certain amount of like association you get with a character like her. When she points the gun at Jack and says get out of the truck, and he basically just slams on the brakes and kicks her ass out, right, she gets like taken down a peg and she's not just like instantly the best at everything and like the coolest and the most awesome and she like has to learn to be good and I think that gives you a strong tether to her character and that you, you know, by the end she becomes like the ultimate badass after her trials. You know, which I thought was appealing and I don't know I I didn't. I get what you're saying, but, um, go ahead, monty. I interrupted you okay.

Speaker 5 1:33:31

So, uh, I have I. I was very impressed by furiosa. Uh, it was um so around like the first, like quarter of the movie. I was very, very, very worried. I thought that I love what they did with Chris Hemsworth. They gave him the Macklemore Jewish nose, so he's Sephardic Hemsworth in this, which I thought was an absolute treat. But kind of to counter what Wolfman was saying earlier about that character is like I didn't think he was fun at all. I thought that he was like a really obnoxious Reddit antagonist the whole time. He's like cartoonishly evil, but not in a fun way, but almost like a fourth wall breaking meta way, and that really bothered me for a long time.

Speaker 1 1:34:19

I agree with you. I didn't think he was fun, I thought he was rather miserable, like, and I thought that's why chris himsworth, I thought he did a good job because when they pull up to him and they're at bullet town and he's or their gas town and he's like this place is a mess, everyone's fucking mad at me. I can't keep it together not my fault.

Speaker 1 1:34:34

I'm like this guy's a miserable prick. Like you know, I didn't. I didn't find him to be, incredibly, now, the first scene when we meet him. I did. I thought he was a little more.

Speaker 4 1:34:43

Yes. But that's that's what I'm saying. By the end of the movie, you're, you're kind of you're seeing the reality of his character, but when he's introduced, like, and when he's kind of coming up in the world, he's like Hercule from Dragon Ball Z. He's this dude who thinks he's so great and he thinks he's this great like leader and this paragon of because he's fooled everyone and yet he has, because then there has to be something.

Speaker 4 1:35:07

There has to be something too, because all these people are following him. He's got the. He's got the three motorcycle chariot that he rides around so cool the ben hermobile come on, and then, and then, as it goes on, you see that he's in way over his head and that if he has any talents or strengths, it's in being a roving warlord, it's not in running shit uh yeah but he's in, over in his head, and he's in.

Speaker 4 1:35:32

He's in a world where you can't retreat, you can't surrender ground that you've gained, because if you do, you die uh, and your allies are expendable. By that point he's not fun, but by that point because he's his performance is just more dynamic, so he's more interesting to watch but he's arguably the protagonist of the movie and I think what you just described makes this movie great.

Speaker 3 1:35:57

Because of that, it's in and complaining about furiosa for whatever reason. I think she's more like an afterthought in her own movie, which is fine in this situation because we've given a much more interesting character to follow throughout the entire movie.

Speaker 4 1:36:09

Well, they basically gave her the Mad Max treatment. Everyone was bitching that Mad Max wasn't the main character in Mad Max Fury Road. And now Furiosa is not the main character in Furiosa.

Speaker 3 1:36:21

Well, how could you not want to be behind him?

Speaker 1 1:36:23

Go ahead, he's doing stuff.

Speaker 5 1:36:25

I mean, it's like Furiosa is the antagonist and I think that that's like, makes it more interesting, like she is, like it's like the whole Mary Sue of it all. Well, no, actually she's not, because she's like motivated and fueled by like cold, hard vengeance. Yes, like she is, because she's motivated and fueled by cold, hard vengeance, she is doomed. Yes, she wins in the end, but at what cost? Her humanity and her arm.

Speaker 4 1:36:46

Yeah, for the record, I'm not accusing her of Mary Sudom at all. No, of course not. I'm just saying that the way she is written, they don't give the actor. Either they don't give or they. Either they don't give or they don't let them do enough.

Speaker 5 1:37:03

Like even.

Speaker 4 1:37:05

Even Max In Fury Road Will grin or will have a funny double take. There are little elements To like. Okay, there's more to this guy Than him just being an engine of action To drive the plot, Whereas Furiosa in Fury Road she feels completely utilitarian and she feels that way a lot in this movie as well, and I just I find that to be. I think that's a weakness of both movies.

Speaker 1 1:37:36

If you're going to have this character like, give them more like umph I'm with you that there could have been a little more like mad max, like tom hardy's version. He's almost kind of a silent film character in a way, like there's also always constant like gestures and reactions and him looking around like I'm thinking about when he has the girl come up and like cut his chain and he's like fidgeting around watching is something gonna happen to me? I'm. I'm in a vulnerable, precarious position right now, like yeah, there's really nothing like that with Furiosa.

Speaker 1 1:38:03

She's always just sort of like in a moment where you could do something, like that was when she was underneath the truck and her motorcycle escape plan and food gets wiped away, which I really like. That exchange between her and the I don't know what you call it Awesome Piss boy or the dude that fixes the box, that was really cool, yeah, but um, but uh, no, I I think that, for whatever reason, miller wants her to be wearing goggles and having a thing covering her face the entire time, which I think maybe limits her ability to you know, I don't know why their eyes and trembling colors puts that in the chat too, I mean, and you tell her joy also very striking.

Speaker 3 1:38:41

You know her eyes are very prominent throughout the movie and they do speak a lot through that. That's. That's probably the most that she does in the movie, since she barely speaks at all and she barely has any other hand gestures or movements.

Speaker 1 1:38:53

Her eyes do most of the speaking for her even if it's by the way as we're, as we're saying which the first time she speaks, I was like whoa you gave me? I was like did you dub?

Speaker 3 1:39:04

charlize theron's voice in there. It sounded exactly the same as uh, fury road to me she was good.

Speaker 1 1:39:11

No, I I dug it. I thought it was uh, although did you?

Speaker 3 1:39:14

feel that by the end of the movie, as they're segwaying back into fury road where she's gonna load up a tanker with the women to escape, did you feel that this was the same character that we're seeing in the in the previous movie? By then, I did not.

Speaker 5 1:39:26

I did not as a matter of fact, uh, at the by the end of furiosa. Uh, she is a part of the war tribunal. Like she is, like the she is, uh, um, oh god, iron curtain. What's that? Uh, who is that guy? Uh? Stalin no, no, the fucking, uh. The english guy with like the nose cover thing, the oh yeah, that guy, yeah the the yeah right churchill, uh, churchill, who plays with his nipples like she's on the same level. Oh, there you go.

Speaker 1 1:39:52

Yeah, that's, that's not right. Right, yeah, they're that was kind of interesting well and that's the that.

Speaker 4 1:39:57

Well, so that's the thing too.

Speaker 4 1:39:58

By the end of that movie, by the end of Furiosa, there is no, there's, no, there's no good reason for her to do what she does there's no good reason for her to betray uh Immortan Joe and take all his wives away, other than her just being like, well, I'm, I'm a good person now and the right thing to do is to set these women free, like it would have been better just to end it after her getting revenge or whatever. And you assume, 10 years go by and she develops a bond with these women. Or you can plant no pun intended, you can plant a little seed of her kind of uh forming a bond with them. You you know, and then so, oh, okay, yeah.

Speaker 4 1:40:41

Maybe, through hanging out with these women, she discovers her like womanhood and she wants to rescue them from this tyrant. But yeah, it doesn't work at the end of that movie.

Speaker 5 1:40:49

The Furiosa that we see at the end of her movie would have all of like the women who were like in the vault, if they ever like, shot out like a mutant baby, she would be the first one to shoot them yeah, yeah, I mean like she was very much in with morton joe, like you could tell, like she obviously has a little disagreement with him, but like she's one of his boys and like he's an equal opportunity

Speaker 5 1:41:09

employer and she's a girl and he's like, yeah, that's cool, you're a good driver, you can be a part of the crew, right when she comes back from the convoy with like the really like, uh like advanced, uh like train that they were driving, uh like that. Never once has this person ever uh been introduced to immortal joe, not once, other than a mute boy comes into the room with hair down, finally speaking, obviously, a woman saying I know where they're going, etc. And there is not a single point of discussion there. And I think that is the most bewildering part of this and that also is in the camp of like. Why in the world would a complete stranger coming back and like reporting on X?

Speaker 1 1:41:48

Y Z like an insane person. No, they met Morton Joe. They had a conversation after the bullet farm was taken over, where they went back and told him and it was her and Jack and they had a meeting with him.

Speaker 3 1:41:57

Yes it was her and jack, and they had a meeting with him. Yes, yes, okay, my fault.

Speaker 1 1:42:04

Yeah, so yeah, she's there with the guy at first, not to rain on your point there, but she was an established member of the crew, right?

Speaker 3 1:42:08

but you know what? That was the same girl that he had wanted, uh, earlier, you know because that was the thing.

Speaker 1 1:42:14

That was the part that I didn't put together it didn't make sense that she wouldn't continue to pretend to be a boy, like I know jack knew that she was a girl, which, by the way, any any time, like that's kind of my point yeah anytime the girl is revealed, the boy is revealed to be actually a girl, it's like instant win, like everyone loves that.

The Decline of Theater Experience

Speaker 1 1:42:30

You know her, that her hair comes out and she's all beautiful and you know, uh. But yeah, she should have continued to pretend to be a guy, because you know, they, they, they, they didn't notice, like where the hell did you come from?

Speaker 5 1:42:41

You know, right, that was every towel Boy's dream is to be revealed as a girl and be loved.

Speaker 1 1:42:50

This is what they took from you.

Speaker 2 1:42:51

This is what towel was like Can you, can you, can you guys hear me Okay.

Speaker 1 1:42:56

Yeah, are you back, brother.

Speaker 2 1:43:06

You dipped, hear me, okay. Yeah, are you back, brother? You dipped out there for a while, yeah, yeah, no, I was just having trouble, uh, some technical issues here, but uh, I was just gonna say, uh, the problem that I had with furiosa is just what you guys are talking about. Where, like uh, so far, uh, uh, I think, talking about these movies, uh, I haven't really had any trouble like remembering anything that happened with Furiosa. There's so much happening in the movie that I cannot. It's like you know I can kind of understand.

Speaker 2 1:43:31

Yeah, it's like I can understand why the box office is the way it was. Is that? It's like it's one of the movies like? When I saw it, I really didn't. I wasn't like crazy about it. I was like I was like, oh, there was like so much happening that I I just really know uh and I a previous experience I had with movie, uh, spring breakers. I remember when I saw that I was like, oh, this movie sucked. And then later I was like, oh yeah, this was awesome, like, but like that's how I felt about furiosa. After the fact where I was like when I was watching it, I was like, oh yeah, this is awesome, like. But like that's how I felt about Furiosa. After the fact where I was like when I was watching it, I was like, oh yeah, this is well.

Speaker 3 1:44:07

I could see why normies aren't going yeah, why do you think this movie is not doing well box office, besides all the general box office issues that every movie is having these days exactly?

Speaker 4 1:44:19

I've got a couple things to say about that one. Uh, it doesn't help that and I know, I know that you know people going into this know that mad max isn't in it. But nothing, nothing speaks more to the times that we're living in, and especially how bad all sequels and remakes are, than the fact that the longest mad max movie and longest by an hour, like the original trilogy they're all about an hour and a half fury roads about two. This is two and a half hours long and it's the one movie that mad max isn't in fuck you right there but, also.

Speaker 4 1:44:57

So I, I the I went and saw furiosa. That's the first new movie I've seen since before covid. The last new movie I saw was joker, and I say new because in between then I went and saw a nightmare on elm street and fellowship of the ring at a little art house theater that's here uh where I and I don't.

Speaker 4 1:45:18

I'm not going to compare the art house theater experience to the regular theater experience, because you have different problems. Okay, uh, the movie theaters as an industry, which were already flagging and then covet, hit, and it's a fucking miracle they survived it. All this, this, this, uh, industry of ungrateful incompetence. Not only did they not do anything to make going to the theater more appealing, to get people to come back after the losses they suffered with covid, they doubled down on everything that everyone has been bitching about for years. Uh, I went to go see this movie. I went to a matinee, so the ticket price wasn't that bad. The small Coke and small popcorn were $20. They were more than the ticket to see the movie. And I know, oh well, the concessions are always expensive. That's how they get you, yeah, but that's ridiculous $10 for a small soda is insane.

Speaker 4 1:46:17

I go and they're like oh, it's unlimited refills. Well, actually it isn't, because it's unlimited refills and well, actually it isn't, because it's small. You only get the refills with the large. But anyway, I go into the theater. There's nobody else in there, which that was fine. Uh, I, I liked that. But uh, because these new theaters, they all have these bigger, comfy, like lazy boy seats. Well, now you have trying to help you, dude.

Speaker 1 1:46:38

They're trying to give you something new.

Speaker 4 1:46:39

Go ahead no, I know, but you have. You have fewer seats in each theater, so now you have to have more showings to get the sales that you would need, like compared to how you used to get. Uh, but also so then we've got ads. We've got previews for movies that I don't want to see, and then we've got more ads.

Speaker 1 1:47:01

They've tacked on more ads after the previews so I skip all that 30 minutes of commercials like needs to be sent to a gulag. Like it is outrageous I told ryan the same thing. I'm like I have to sit through maria menudo's saying, hey, which movie was darth v? You know.

Speaker 5 1:47:18

A Star Trek, Can you pass this movie quiz? So then go and hear an ad for her fucking spiritual therapy podcast Like no thanks, Go away.

Speaker 3 1:47:28

Nowadays you can buy. Because you have to buy your ticket in advance. You can't just show up anymore at the movie theater, so you can skip all that. So you can go half an hour after the run time. You have no idea when the movie's gonna start. It's for 40 minutes now it can't be.

Speaker 1 1:47:45

The previews can't be that long. People don't have three fucking hours. You know what I mean.

Speaker 4 1:47:49

So then yes, so already a bloated runtime of two and a half hours.

Speaker 4 1:47:52

You tack on 40 minutes to that now and here's in, here's, and this is a. This is not an old run-down theater I went to. It's the big chain that exists where I live. It's multi-state. You have this chain all over. It was a nice-looking theater. Everything was clean, everything was nice Pitch dark for the previews and for the ads. When the movie starts, the lights come up. What, yeah? And so I'm the only person in the theater, so I can't just wait and hope somebody else goes and says something, so, but I'm the only person in there. I'm like well, I'm not getting up, I don't want to miss anything. Uh, I called the theater because, you know, nobody else is in there, so I don't have a qualm about getting on my phone. They're like hey, blah, blah, blah. Oh, how can we help you? I'm like, hey, I'm in theater nine, the movie has started, but the lights have come up, please turn them off. And he was like oh, yeah, I'll take care of that. Nothing ever happened.

Speaker 1 1:48:48

The lights stayed up the whole goddamn movie that that that happened to me when I went and saw uncut gems, which was terrible, and I walked out and I'm like, what's the deal? And they're like, oh, this is like the movie for people with wheelchair and who are deaf and who need more light or something. And I was like, what the hell are you talking about? Yeah, I was like the only guy in the place, but you know what I had. You know, it was even worse back when 3d movies were a thing. Remember that? Yeah, I was.

Speaker 1 1:49:11

I went to the 2d screening and they played the 3d version. So it was just blurry and I didn't have any glasses and I went. I'm like, I'm like you're playing the 3d version, oh, oh, you know what the most infuriating part of this kind of thing is, too, is that when the we go and have these nitpicks, for whatever reason, all of our friends it doesn't bother them it's like that fucking motion smoothing on your tv and they're like what are you talking about, bro? I'm like, how do you not fucking like, like, how do you not know?

Speaker 3 1:49:39

You know, anyway, that's just my way of saying it, when I went to see Thanksgiving, the end of the movie, the last 10, 15 minutes it went out of focus, like the entire movie was in focus and then all of a sudden, the last 15 minutes, everything was blurry, like I had taken off my glasses or something like that. It was bizarre. And nobody screaming behind us about that was identified with the killer in the movie, which was very frightening. So people here is much worse than any other obstacle that occurs.

Speaker 4 1:50:09

These are not problems with the new innovative technology. We solved all this back in the fucking 1980s. There's a little bit of light when the trailers are on, so people who are coming in late can see. When the movie starts the lights go down and when the movie ends they come back up. We had that. We had that solved decades ago, but now it's a problem again. All of a sudden decline. We're running out of we're running out of water. We're running out of breedable women.

Speaker 3 1:50:36

The lights don't go down in the theater they put a fresh coat of paint on it, though, to to gloss it over. But yeah, there's a lot of structural problems that are that are inherently going to destroy it at some point.

Speaker 1 1:50:48

I think the previews are bad. But then also the interminable Coca-Cola movie ad I have to watch, where they're like oh, I'm drinking Coke and I'm in the movie, or whatever it's like.

Speaker 3 1:50:57

Well, I have to cut to actually truncated that horrible nicole kidman promo that they had. It's now like about maybe 15 to 20 seconds. It's perfect. It's perfect at that point like here's amc, here we are, nicole kidman, got it, got it nicole kidman, because the nicole kidman is like boy.

Speaker 1 1:51:14

Aren't movies great? Wow, movies are amazing. I'm like, yeah, I'm fucking here it. It reminds me of that Doug Stanhope bit where he's like you like drugs?

Speaker 5 1:51:20

You ever see him advertised. Also keep in mind in the Nicole Kidman thing it has Wonder Woman as one of the movies that's on the silver screen. So it's kind of also just bomb-inducing already.

Speaker 1 1:51:31

It makes us feel good.

Speaker 4 1:51:33

She's in an empty theater.

Speaker 1 1:51:36

Yeah, you know what it's, yeah, yeah, and you know what. It's just a reminder and the the theater she's in is like amazing and you're like I want to be in that theater. Why the fuck am I in this dump? You know what I mean. You're like that's a nice look at theater.

Speaker 3 1:51:45

Yeah the guy behind me was dozed off on uh substances most of the time when I go, there's no one in the theater. I'm the only person in the theater, that's just my general, which is fine by me, because every time that there is someone else they want to sit right next to you and then they're either shining their cell phone light, like in my direction one time some guy was having like what looked like a Tourette's attack and he was having like the ex-pasms, and then another guy was like vaping.

Speaker 3 1:52:09

It's just, people are just that was me yeah, no, it was not you, but it was just weird. People do weird stuff in the movie theater, and well you know what?

Speaker 1 1:52:18

the comfy chairs, I think, give people license to be more like slobs, like the old.

Speaker 3 1:52:23

The old chairs made you kind of be attentive and sit up, yeah, and now everyone's just like I'm at my couch at home, basically, and so I can exactly like I'm at home and I can make comments and talk, and you know but so they have given, they have disincentivized completely the public to go to the theater there's no reason to go to the theater.

Speaker 4 1:52:43

Everyone has a gigantic fucking tv in their home. Uh, the time between a movie being in theaters and it being on streaming is what like a month yeah I think salt burn was out in three weeks yeah, yeah, it's no time at all, and even if it's like, oh, I could find it on streaming, but oh, I have to pay 20, that's still less than you're going to pay in the theater.

Speaker 4 1:53:02

Like yeah, like there's no reason at all to go to the theaters. The industry is going to die. There's still going to be a few here and there. They're, you know, for like art house stuff, but the time of oh, let's get our friends or let's get the family together, let's go see a movie on Friday night and we'll get snacks and it'll be a great time and we'll all talk about it afterward.

Speaker 3 1:53:24

That's over, forget it. It's too expensive, like you were saying too. If you have a family of four, for instance. I mean that's impossible, you're spending.

Speaker 5 1:53:30

I think $130. Yeah.

Speaker 1 1:53:32

I live in a smallish community town and I went to the IMAX. I don't live in a huge metropolitan area. It was $36 for two tickets to IMAX.

Speaker 2 1:53:42

It's fucking crazy.

Speaker 2 1:53:44

You know I miss the old times of I would go down to the Hopkins Cinema 6 in Hopkins, minnesota, and I would see a movie for $2.50. I'd bring my girlfriend and guess what? There'd be a grease stain on the screen. There'd be a giant grease stain. But you know, we just dealt with that all right. You know, sure, you know, you know you, you were gonna see men in black three. Okay, you were excited you were gonna see iron man, whatever. Uh, you didn't care, you didn't care about that. But uh, you were only paying two dollars and 50 cents.

Speaker 1 1:54:17

So it wasn't that big of a deal.

Speaker 2 1:54:20

Now you're seeing you're getting that experience for $20.

Speaker 3 1:54:26

It's ridiculous. It's only financially viable with that pass If you have the AMC or the Regal subscription pass and you pay $20 a month, that's the only way to financially solve it.

Speaker 5 1:54:37

I will say to any AMC heads out there that's like the one near you that you have to go and like go to for, uh, all your cinema going experiences. Um, uh, take advantage of the fact that the people who work there are like, like didn't even get their ged, like, like this is all they got going on uh, and just go and buy child, uh, child's uh tickets are 11 bucks. They're not checking.

Speaker 1 1:55:00

Yeah, that's what I do no, literally, we had like an issue where I was like hey, my wife's tickets not showing up for whatever reason.

Speaker 3 1:55:07

Oh okay, here you go, you know it's like they don't care yeah, at my regal theater where I used to go, there used to be no ticket person. You could literally I mean I always I had the subscription pass, obviously, but like you would just walk in and no one would stop you. Like you, just walk in. There's no, there's like no employees.

Speaker 5 1:55:23

It's bizarre oh yeah, I've spent multiple weekends just going from like theater to theater, just going and seeing like different movies for like an entire afternoon for the price of one ticket, because no one gives a shit I used to do that in college, but there's just not two movies out simultaneously.

Speaker 1 1:55:38

That I want to say yeah. Yeah, unless I want to go see Exorcist 2, the fucking whatever. There's like three horror movies that are immaculate exorcism, or whatever.

Speaker 3 1:55:49

What's his name? Russell Crowe's making another exorcism movie.

Speaker 1 1:55:52

I did see that. Actually I thought it was okay.

Speaker 3 1:55:53

Yeah, I don't know why, after the last Pope's Exorcist, which you would recommend.

Speaker 2 1:56:00

Hey guys, I got to run here but it's great being on here with you guys.

Speaker 1 1:56:04

Pleasure bud you bet.

Speaker 2 1:56:05

Have a good one Good talking to you.

Speaker 3 1:56:06

Yeah, dude, have a good one.

Speaker 1 1:56:09

Well, do you think it's time to wrap it up, boys? I appreciate you coming on.

Speaker 3 1:56:12

I think so yeah thank you so much for the invite.

Speaker 1 1:56:14

This has been fun.

Speaker 5 1:56:15

I.

Speaker 1 1:56:17

I'm glad we got to bitch about movies theaters because, yeah, they need to get their act together. There needs to be less of them.

Speaker 5 1:56:22

They just need to like, consolidate and have one really nice movie theater, you know and also get rid of the fucking coke freestyle machines and just have like regular fucking fountains.

Speaker 4 1:56:32

I hate these things well, and if you're gonna have fewer theaters, that means you're gonna have to hire fewer people, which is good. Take some of that money that you saved from keeping all those locations open and hire bouncers yep so when people act up in the fucking theater. They get dragged out.

Speaker 1 1:56:50

No refunds yep, I'm with you. It's always such a process. So if you want to kick anybody out because they want to do like people's court on the spot and adjudicate whether or not they were like misbehaving, then you have to listen.

Speaker 5 1:57:04

You know, I really do like house entire, like like their entire shtick is, if you're on your phone, you're out, like there's like like no strikes uh, and even then, like I've been to multiple uh alamo, like uh showings and it's, they just allow like like xyz person to just like do whatever they want yeah, I think alamo is a theater.

Speaker 1 1:57:26

I actually have one of those in my area. I liked it. I like it mostly because they curate retrospectives a lot and they have a nice restaurant and you can get a beer and you know people bitch about the food thing. It doesn't bother me that much because most of the time I'm there to see a movie I've already seen before. So it doesn't bother me when they're like, hey, you're fucking us 30 bucks, you know what I mean.

Speaker 3 1:57:44

But like, uh, I don't know, you're not, you're against that for me, and then people with the silverware and stuff like that making tons of noise, clanging their cords and knives and they need to order like food and they need to turn on the light to inspect the menu and they need to do all this stuff. It's like come on.

Speaker 1 1:58:00

Maybe I'm like a Reddit slop consumer, but I went to. They did Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 and they made barbecue, which was fun and I was eating it.

Speaker 5 1:58:11

I'm a sucker for a cocktail pairing, but that doesn't sound half bad.

Speaker 4 1:58:15

All those things you can do at home with friends. And if you're streaming a new movie that costs like $20, well, if you invite some friends over, everyone's pitching $5.

Speaker 1 1:58:27

That's pay-per-view yeah.

Speaker 4 1:58:29

Just have some friends over, or you and your gal, or your wife or your family. I don't know what y'all's situation is, but whatever it is, yeah.

Speaker 1 1:58:36

Polycule.

Speaker 4 1:58:37

Texas Chainsaw Massacre go get barbecue, watch it Me. And is, yeah, polycule, texas saints chainsaw massacre go get barbecue, watch it me and my friends. Uh, one thanksgiving. We watched all the lord of the rings movies throughout the day and we did a meet, we did a meal with each movie. So for fellowship of the ring, we did a big breakfast. We, I mean, we had eggs, bacon, sausage, biscuits, oatmeal, all this stuff for for towers. We did a big camp stew.

Speaker 5 1:58:59

Second breakfast, yeah.

Speaker 4 1:59:02

For a return of the King. We had this huge dinner with like like steak and potatoes and like like fine dinner. It was awesome.

Speaker 1 1:59:11

That sounds really fun.

Speaker 4 1:59:13

Yeah.

Speaker 1 1:59:13

Thankful for Peter Jackson that day.

Speaker 4 1:59:16

Yeah, you can do it at home, friends.

Speaker 1 1:59:20

All right, well, hey guys, guys, that's been a lot of fun. Thanks for coming on. I gotta go spend time with my uh, my wife, but it's been.

Speaker 5 1:59:27

What a blast, you know. Thanks so much I'm gonna.

Speaker 1 1:59:29

No, I'm an attentive guy, you know I I get a little me time, but uh, no, I appreciate you coming on.

Speaker 4 1:59:34

It's been a lot of fun yeah, just be careful if you take her up north to the country. Oh yeah, all right, guys see you later have a good one.

Speaker 1 1:59:41

Take care everybody. Be careful if you take her up north to the country.

Speaker 3 1:59:43

Oh no, yeah, all right guys, see you later.

Speaker 1 1:59:44

Have a good one, Take care everybody.

Speaker 3 1:59:45

See you.

Speaker 1 1:59:46

Bye, hey, thank you.